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FORES 



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MA]SrUAL. 




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TEINTH EDITION. 



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NO OUL-TURE WI-TMOU-T p-ORESXS, 
NO F-O RESTS WITHOUT OUl_TURE= 



H1 1672 



BY 



J. O. BAEHETT 



Secretary of the State Forestry Association. 

MINNEAPOLIS. MINN. 



Published by 

The Progr^ssivb Age Publishing Co., 

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 



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MANUAL. 




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TENTH EDITION 



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NO CULTURE WITHOUT I=-ORESTS, 
NO RORESTS WITHOUT CULTURE. 



BY 



J. O. BAEBETT, 

Secretary of the State Forestry Association. 
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 



Published by 
The Progressive Age Publishing Co., 

MINNEAPOLIS, MINN. 



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OFFICERS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR 1894. 



John H. Stevens, 
J. 0. Barrett, 



President. 
Treasurer and Secretary. 



VICE-PRE SIDE NT S. 



First Congressional District, Wm. Somerville, 



Viola, Minn. 



Second 

Third 

Fourth 

Fifth 

Sixth 

Seventh 



Alfred Terry, - - - Slayton, Minn. 
N. F. Brand, - - Faribault, Minn. 
R. S. Macintosh, - - Langdon, Minn. 
S. M. Owen, - Minneapolis, Minn. 
Chas. E. Holt, - - Duluth, Minn. 
0. A. Th. Solem, - Halstad, Minn. 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



S. M. Owen, Minneapolis, Minn. 

S. B. Green, . . . . St. Anthony Park, Minn. 

Wm. E. Dobbyn, - Minneapolis, Minn. 

0. F. Brand, Faribault, Minn. 

J. S. Harris, La Crescei. Minn. 

L. H. Wilcox, Hastings, Minn. 

C. L. Smith, -..-.- Minneapolis, Minn. 



AUDITING AND PRINTING COMMITTEE. 



L. A. Wilcox. 



S. M. Owen. 



S. B. Green. 



LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR. 

To His Excellency, Hon. Knute Nelson, Governor of Minnesota: 

Dear Sir:— The legislative act of 1893, basing support for the State For- 
estry Association, requires an annual report of its doings, together with 
such other information as it may deem necessary to further advance the 
interests of forestry. 

The Minnesota Board of World's Fair Commissioners liberally provided 
for an exhibit of our woods at the Columbian Exposition of 1893, in Chicago, 
Til., and allowed the Association the honor of official representation. The 
exhibit ranked with the first class, and awarded accordingly. Great interest 
was manifested in our woods by citizens of other states and nationalities, 
and earnest inquiries made as to their extensiveness for commercial uses. 
Soon after the close of the exposition, the commissioners tendered the en- 
tire exhibit to the Forestry Association, as state property in trust, and 
re-erected it in the Main Building on the State Fair Grounds, preserving 
its original form greatly improved. 

During the fiscal year the Association published and distributed 35,000 
copies of the Tree Planter's Manual and other forestry pamphlets, besides 
the ninth edition in the report of the State Agricultural Society. The sec- 
retary also prepared the forestry department in the report of the State 
Horticultural Society, and President Stevens, in the annual of the Farmers' 
Institute. Under the direction of the World's Fair commissioners, the 
secretary edited another 32-page pamphlet on forestry, entitled "Minne- 
sota and Its Flora," and distributed the 10,000 copies at the Columbian 
Exposition. The aggregate of these several pamphlets is 70,000, added 
to which should be mentioned our other forestry literature issued in 27te 
Progressive Age, Farm, Stock and Home and other journals, reaching 
weekly and semi-monthly hundreds of thousands of readers. 

The association expended $94.70, of which $47.75 were new membership 
funds, for forest seedlings and seeds, and distributed the same among peo- 
ple calling for them. Most of these plants were evergreens. 

The association has now arranged to distribute mail packages of the 
Jack Oak Acorns to be planted this fall as tests for wind-breaks. 

An effort was made to raise evergreens for next year's free distribution, 
but the dryness of the -purchased seeds and the severe drouth brought only 
failure. 

In presenting this summary of work, we respectfully call the attention 
of your excellency to this report, especially to what relates to the needs of 
legislation on irrigation, forest reservation, forest zoology, forest fires and 
forest education in our common schools. 



4 LETTER TO THE GOVERNOR. 

EXPENSE ACCOUNT. 
. • 1893 . . 

August 1 — By Appropriations $1,500.00 

" 7 — Cooperation Printing Co., prtg. Manual.. $ 2.5.50 

" 7 — The Progressive Age, pamphlets 22.00 

'* 19 — TTieProgfresswe^ge, printing and postage. 63.60 

" 22 — J. O. Barrett, postage and express 14.75 

October 28— Wm. R. Dobbyn, printing 25.00 

November 13 — Wm. L. Peck, services 30.00 

" 25 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, serv. and seed expenses.. 113.00 

" 28 — J. O. Barrett, express and postage 4.85 

December 15 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, publication and distribu- 
tion forestry literature 25.00 

. . 1894 . . 

January 30 — J. O. Barrett, labor services and postage. 65.50 
February 24 — J. O. Barrett, services, ninth edition Man- 
ual and expenses 50.64 

" 27 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, pub. forestry literature. 25.00 

March 5 — J. O. Barrett, paid for pub. pamphlet.... 30.00 

" 24 — J. O. Barrett, seed dist. misc. expenses.. 55.15 

'♦ 30 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, pub. forestry literature. 25.00 

May 7 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, pub. forestry literature. 25.00 

*' 12 — Wm. R. Dobbyn, pub. forestry literature. 8.58 

•' 21— J. O. Barrett, preparing and dist. lit 75.45 

" 31— Wm. R. Dobbyn, prtg. and dist. lit 25.00 

June 23— Wm. R. Dobbyn, prtg. and dist. lit 25.00 

July 14 — J. O. Barrett, preparing and distributing 

forestry literature, and postage 79.01 

" 25 — L. H. Wilcox, expenses as member of 

Finance Committee 12.50 

" 30— Wm. R. Dobbyn, pub. and dist. literature. 25.00 
August 4 — J. O. Barrett, stock for tenth edition of 

Tree Planter's Manual 119.39 

" 14 — J. O. Barrett, v^^ork on tenth edition of 

Manual, and stationery 75.75 

" 14 — J. O. Barrett, publishing 10,000 copies 

tenth edition Manual 1894 275.00 

*' 14 — J. O. Barrett, binding 500 copies tenth 

edition Manual 1894 60.00 

$1,380.67 

" 14 — To balance 119.33 

1894 $1, .^00.00 $1,500.00 

" 16— By balance in State Treasury $119.33 

J. 0. Barrett, Secretary. 
John H. Stevens, President. 



Indigenous Trees and Shrubs. 



CAPULIFER/E.-OAK FAMILY. 

The oak is one of the most useful trees in the world. Having greater 
tenacity of fiber, solidity and durability, it is first sought in the construc- 
tion of bridges, cars, sea vessers, implements of industry and husbandry 
of every description. It does not produce good seed until it is about six 
years old, and seldom fruits two successive years. It increases in pro- 
ductiveness with age. It takes five or six years to get a good foothold in 
the soil, and then it grows rapidly till it has attained the age of thirty or 
forty years. Some of the oaks have great longevity, extending to upwards 
of a thousand years. 

Prof. Asa Gray classifies thirty-two species of the oak family in the 
United States. Prof. Warren Upham, in his catalogue of the Flora of 
Minnesota, mentions fourteen, eight of which are classed as oaks real 
— quercus. 

THE WHITE OAK, QucTCus alba. 

The white or American oak is common over the middle states, also the 
Canadas and as far north as Lake Winnipeg where it is rarely over ten or 
twenty feet. It used to be abundant in our state, and still remains with 
us, scattered over woodlands, more especially where the transportation 
does not warrant cutting. The size varies with the soil and climate. An 
idea obtains that where it naturally grows the soil is strong. It does not 
follow, for it plants itself on gravelly and sterile soils, and wherever its 
acorns can get a foothold. The larger in size and better in fiber are found 
In deep, rich soils. 

It can be readily distinguished from other oak by its leaves which are 
regular and oblique, divided into oblong, rounded lobes, destitute of points. 
"Soon after unfolding," says Nuttall, "they are reddish above and white 
and downy beneath; when fully grown, they are smooth and of a light 
green on the upper surface and glaucous underneath. In the fall they 
change to a bright violet color, and form an agreeable contrast with the 
surrounding foliage which has not yet suffered from the frost." It can 
also be distinguished by the whiteness of Its bark, frequently variegated 



6 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

with large black spots; useful for tanning purposes. The acorns of this 
tree, and nothing is more interesting to inspect, are oval in form, large, 
sweet, contained in rough, shallow, grayish cups, single or in pairs. 

The wood is reddish. It is manufactured into wheels, furniture, car 
frames, plow beams and handles, bridges, steamers and sail vessels, dock 
yards, and multitudes of other things that require solidity and durability. 

The demand for the wood is so great that ere a quarter of a century has 
passed, the American oak for commercial purposes will be the same as 
extinct. How few give the least thought of the oak famine just ahead! 

SCARLET OAK, Quevcus coccinia. 

The scarlet oak is quite common on tKe Upper Mississippi, interspersed 
with other oaks. In favorable localities it is known to grow from three 
to four feet in diameter and eighty feet in height. Gray bark, its interior 
reddish; wood also reddish, coarse-grained, open p©res, poor timber com- 
pared with white or red oak; makes good staves. Its leaves have long foot- 
stalks, beautiful green, smooth, shiny on both sides, deep, narrow lobes, 
which in perspective look like green-bordered bays. After successive 
frosts in the fall, they turn to a bright red. Acorns large and somewhat 
elongated; cups coarse-scaly, covering half or more of the rounded acorns. 
This tree does well in dry soil, and may be considered as hardy for the 
prairie. 

THE POST OAK, Qu&Tcus obtusUoba. 

The Post Oak, known elsewhere as the Box-white Oak and sometimes 
Iron Oak, is, as a rule, but thinly disseminated over the country. Either 
by birds or some other method of transportation, its acorns have lodged in 
the soil regions of the Upper Mississippi, but is infrequent. 

Its fructification seldom fails. "The acorns are small, oval and covered 
for a third of their length with a slightly rugged grayish cup. They are 
very sweet, and form a delicious food for squirrels and wild turkeys (farther 
south), hence the tree is sometimes called the Turkey Tree." It rarely 
exceeds fifteen inches in diameter and forty to fifty feet in height. It has 
elbow-like branches, disproportionately large summit and thick, grayish 
white bark. Its leaves are thick, grayish, downy beneath, pale and rough 
above. The wood is yellowish. For staves and posts it takes the lead of 
all the oaks. Its timber is sometimes confounded with the white oak, 
which it resembles. Probably has never been well tested on the prairies 
of Minnesota. Being so tough every way, with judicious treatment it 
would, no doubt, prove invaluable. 

YELLOW CHESTNUT OAK, Quercus prinus acuminata . 

This tree is rare in comparison with, many others. It has been found 
in the southeastern part of Minnesota. Its special retreat is in valleys 
where the soil is loose, deep and fertile; and there it may attain a height 
of seventy or eighty feet, and two feet in diameter; the branches trying to 
hug the trunk as if to protect it from the cold, a habit that perhaps 
would commend it for the prairie where it can be rightly protected by other 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 7 

Its leaves are oblong or lance-like. The acorns are small, set prettily in 
slightly scaly cups, and are sweeter than those of any other species in the 
United States. The bark is whitish, sometimes plated. The wood is yel- 
lowish. Its pores are irregularly disposed, quite numerous, hence not 
equal in strength and durability with some of the other oaks. 

THE BUR OAK, Quevcus Tnacrocapa. 

The Bur Oak, known also as the Over-cup or Mossy-cup White Oak, is 
common throughout the state and country at large. It is found growing 
in all kinds of soil. According to Bell, its northern limit north of Lake 
Superior is near the international boundary. 

The leaves are larger than any other oak in the United States, some- 
times fifteen inches long and eight inches broad, notched near the summit 
and lance shape; "obovate" (broad end upward), or oblong lyrately pin- 
natifid (lobed like a lyre) of various shapes, pale or downy beneath, smooth 
above. Its oval-shaped acorns are larger than those of any other American 
species. The cup is thick and rugged, covering about two-thirds of the 
acorn, hard pointed scales, the upper ones, tapering into bristly points, 
making a mossy fringed border. Sometimes, however, more especially in 
compact forests, these flexible filaments are absent, the edge smooth and 
bent inward. 

The fructification of the Bur Oak is not abundant. On sterile soil it is 
small. On the alluvial bottoms or any other deep, rich soil, it towers up 
majestic, sound and full-meated, like the white oak which it there resem- 
bles. In such localities its timber is by no means second-handed. In its 
best estate it grows sixty or more feet high, having tall and far-reach- 
ing limbs, laden with dark tufted foliage. Its bark resembles the Cork- 
bark Elm. This hardy oak deserves more credit than it receives, and should 
be planted more extensively. 

JACK OR BEAR OAK, Quevcus Banistcri. Nuttall. 

The Jack, or Bear Oak, known also as Black Jack, is indigenous to 
Minnesota, and is very prolific where it gets a foothold, especially in the 
more barren and sandy sections. It is bushy, often not more than three 
to four feet high, but sometimes, in favorable localities, will tower up 
from 15 to 20 or more feet. It grows in clusters, sometimes literally 
covering acres, forming so dense thickets as to prevent the passage of 
cattle; would, therefore, make a superior wind break, and in winter, is 
equal to, if not better than, evergreen hedges, for its leaves hang on the 
limbs, and no wind seems strong enough to remove them until the buds of 
spring push them out of the way. No tree in Minnesota; is more hardy. 
"It is an excellent tree to plant for shelter belts," says Mr. Hodges, "serv- 
ing the same purpose in this regard as the evergreens to screen the farms 
from the cold blasts of winter." It also makes an excellent fuel. 

GRAY OAK, Quercus borealis. 

It is located on Prairie River, attaining a height of fifty feet and a 
diameter of ten inches. It bears a close resemblance in foliage to the red 



8 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

oak and in its fruit to the scarlet oak. Leaf large and smooth. Acorns 
middle size, the ends round, cups scaly. Wood, coarse and open, fit only 
for dry wares, but is strong and durable, employed for the knees of vessels 
and wheelwright's work. Otherwise it has no special interest to commend it. 

SWAMP, SPANISH OR PIN OAK, Quevcus palustris. 

A tall tree, found in moist places; hugs to the swamps to find protection 
of other trees; and on the upper Mississippi, in rich soil, towers eighty feet 
or more with a base of three or four feet in diameter. Its secondary 
branches are numerous, slender and quite closely intermingled. 

Leaves similar to those of the scarlet oak, differing principally in propor- 
tions. Acorns, small, round and contained in flat saucer-shaped cups that 
have short scales. 

The bark is adhesive, scarcely cracked; cellular tissue very thick. Wood, 
coarse; pores, open. When young, its pyramidal shape and elegant foliage 
recommend it for parks. 

RED OAK, Quercus rubra. 

The habitat of the Red Oak is in the north where it is cool. If so un- 
lucky as to get into poor soil, it b> no means is diminutive, compared with 
Its congeners like situated. Prof. Gray speaks in its praise, so does every 
other botanist. Large tree ; dark gray, smoothish bark ; coarse, reddish 
wood. The pores are often large enough to pass a hair; strong, used for 
staves and furniture; excellent for dry wares. 

Leaves smooth, shiny on both sides, large, deeply laciniated (slashed), 
roundish at the base, of a dull red in autumn, turning yellow before they fall. 
Acorns, abundant and large, voraciously devoured by bears and other wild 
animals; even horses and cows like them, and hogs fatten on them. "Cups, 
saucer-shape, on a narrow neck, of fine, close scales, very much shorter 
than the nearly oblong acorn." It is the first of American oaks introduced 
into Europe. It is found as far north as Saskatchewan and the rocks of 
Lake Namakeen. Its beauty is unsurpassed. 

The author has thus described the native oaks of Minnesota, as reported 
by Prof. Warren Upham. There are others introduced into some of our 
parks and lawns, some of these from the eastern continent, and when fully 
tested as to hardiness, will be sought more extensively ; but the mania to 
look abroad for our trees is not recommendable. We are amply supplied 
with what are already acclimated^ being indigenous. 

HOP-HORNBEAN, Ostrya Virrjinica. 

The American, or Hop-Hornbean, is known also as Iron wood. Lever wood, 
without other distinctions; common in Minnesota, except close to Lake 
Superior. It is usually found in cool, shaded, fertile localities. Farther 
south it sometimes grows twelve or fifteen inches in diameter, and from 
thirty to forty feet in height, but commonly half that size in our state. 

Its leaves are alternate, oval-shaped, taper-pointed, fine-toothed. They 
are quite birch-like. The flowers appearing with them in the spring, are 
borne at the extremities of the branches, and the fruit is in clusters like 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 9 

hops. The seeds are small, hard, triangular, contained in oval, reddish, 
inflated bladders, covered with an irritating fine down. The bark in win- 
ter is smooth and grayish, detached in strips, finely divided. The wood is 
purely white, fine grained, heavy, compact. The tree Is a very slow 
grower. It is used mainly for levers by the woodsmen; it can be put to 
many mechanical uses, such as blocks, mill-cogs, mallets, etc. 

Carpinus Americana is th« true American Hornbean, also called the 
blue or water beech. This is a low tree; its trunk furrowed; very hard 
wood; close gray bark; small leaves, resembling those of the beech; flowers 
with the leaves in the spring. Quite common in our native woods, grow- 
ing indifferently as to soil. There is a unique beauty about it. Its white, 
tough wood recommends it. 

THE BEECH, Fagus ferruginea. 

Probably not a native beech tree grows in the woods of Minnesota, but 
it abounds in Eastern Wisconsin under the salutary influence of Lake 
Michigan. Though not suitable for a pioneer tree, yet it is so valuable 
and susceptible of surviving in special localities under right treatment, it 
is worthy of consideration. It must have moist soil and cool atmosphere. 
It is not well adapted to our dry prairies, but is to the drained alluvial 
soils of our river valleys, where they can be insulated by protecting forests. 

Seed will have to be procured outside of the state. Be sure and have the 
northern grown, such as Eastern Wisconsin furnishes. It ripens in Octo- 
ber. Soon as possible plant under tree shade, where there is light enough, 
however, to sprout them healthfully. Thin out the old shading trees 
gradually, for the young beeches must be acclimated. In three or four 
years you should have all the near supports removed for the reception of 
ample light and ventilation. 



URTICACE/E.-ELM FAMILY. 

The Elm belongs to the Nettle Family, which, according to Gray,includes 
thirty-eight or more species and varieties in the United States. Upham 
mentions thirteen for Minnesota. But we have to deal with trees, not 
shrubs and grasses. He recognizes but three of the elms, the white, the red, 
the cork, as indigenous. 

WHITE ELM, Ulmus Americana. 

The White or American Elm is magnificent. It ranges over a vast area 
from New Foundland to Florida and as far west as the eastern foothills of 
the Rocky Mountains. It adapts itself to different kinds of soil, thriving, 
with proper treatment, on the prairies central on the continent. It leads 
all the other elms in hardiness, size, foliage and beauty. It is a fast grow- 
er; in deep, rich soil and favorable environment, known to attain from two 
to three feet or more diameter in half a century. 

Evidently there are different types of this tree, two especially marked. 
In the alluvial soil of the Mississippi and other river valleys of Minnesota, 



10 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

some of these species branch out from near the ground, towering up in 
grand balance, forming large, round heads, the tips of the branches droop- 
ing somewhat like the weeping willow. The shade of this species, when 
the tree is matured, covers a large area, the branches being so freely yet 
connectedly spread out umbrella shape. 

Another conspicuous type is characterized by a single straight trunk, 
crowned with a smaller and flatter head, and with less shade. It branches 
higher up from the ground than the former, self-pruned, leaving a long 
solid trunk, thirty, forty,and even fifty feet, in some cases, free from limbs 
save now and then abortive branchlets, which in time scale of. As a rule 
this tree seldom needs any pruning. 

Leaves short-stalked, oval, taper pointed. Flowers in April, purplish, 
clustered. Fruit flat, fringed with a dense down. Easily grown. Matures 
in June. Then plant it in thin light loam. No tree should be planted 
more extensively. It belongs to the centuries. 

Generally, this elm is hard to split; hence its wood is very useful for 
wheels, saddle-trees, special kinds of coopering, for keels to small boats, 
and some other mechanical structures. Quite substantial rope can be 
made from its macerated bark. When sawed quartering, polished and 
varnished, it is, in some instances, as beautiful as the black walnut or 
bird's-eye maple. 

SLIPPERY ELM, Ulmus fulva. 

Also known as the Red and Moose Elm, and by the American French as 
the Arme gras. This tree does not grow to the size of the White Elm, nor 
is it as common. It thrives in a well drained soil, while that variety of the 
white called the water elm, prefers a low, alluvial soil. In favorable 
localities of our state it attains fifteen to twenty inches in diameter and 
from fifty to sixty feet in height. It can be readily distinguished in winter 
from the white by the buds, which are rounder and larger, and in their 
early development by being covered by a russet down. Its leaves are also 
larger, thicker and rougher. "These and the flowers," says Gray, "are 
sweet scented in drying." The flowers are grouped at the extremity of the 
young shoots. "Seed in the middle of the orbicular or round oval fruit, 
far away from the shallow notch." The trunk-bark is brown, htart of a 
dull red tinge. The wood appears a perfect make-up and very beautiful 
when well polished and varnished. When exposed to the weather it is of a 
better quality and more durable than the White Elm. It is valuable for 
blocks, ox-yokes, etc. "Well known for its mucilaginous, medicinal inner 
bark." As an ornamental tree it is not as gracefully balanced as the 
white elm, but for utility it should be extensively planted and carefully 
preserved in our woodlands and cultivated groves. 

CORK ELM, Ulmus racemosa. 

The other names for this tree are the White Corky and Rock Elm. For 
wheelwright, furniture, and oth«r purposes, it is the most valuable of all 
the elms; its wood is drier, whiter, cleaner rifted, and finer in constituency. 
It extends north on the higher shores of the upper Mississippi and its 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. H 

tributaries; is' common in nearly all tke woodland counties; but the tree is 
fast going. In some particulars it resembles the White Elm, but is easily 
distinguished by its peculiar color and clefts of bark. The lower branches 
have corky excrescences; young branchlets downy-haired. The bud-scales 
are fringed with hairs. The leaves have straighter veins than those of 
the White. Flowers are clustered; two to four together, the stalk of each 
particular flower in the cluster being arranged along the sides of a general 
peduncle (flower-stalk). The winged fruit is elliptical and the margin deep- 
ly fringed. This elm is deserving of special attention. 



TILIACE^.— LINDEN FAHILY. 

Tilia Americana is known as Basswood, Linden, Lime Tree, Whitewood. 
Naturally abundant in the big woods, but largely consumed now; common 
throughout the native woodlands of the state, "extending north to Bass- 
wood Lake on the international boundary," says Winchell. "Its northern 
limit is just south of Thunder Bay, from which it nearly follows the inter- 
national line to the Lake of the Woods, and thence extends nearly to Lake 
Winnipeg and northwest to Fort Ellice." Being found so far north is 
proof of the hardiness and adaptability to planting in any part of the state. 
Its best condition obtains in loose, deep and fertile soil, growing there 
from 70 to 80 feet high and 3 to 4 feet in diameter. It generally has a 
straight and uniform trunk and a broad, tufted summit. No tree is better 
balanced nor more beautiful. 

When but a few years old the leaves are remarkably large, sometimes 
growing fourteen to fifteen inches long and a foot wide, suspended down a 
petiole (footstalk) about three inches long. On mature trees they are 
smaller. They are attached alternate, nearly round, heart-shaped at the 
base Both sides are quite smooth. The flowers have numerous stamens 
or fertilizing organs. "Their filaments," says Gray, "cohering in five 
clusters, sometimes with a petal-like body in each cluster; others two-celled 
pistil with a five-celled ovary, having two ovals in each cell, iu fruit be- 
coming rather woody globular, one-seeded little nut. * * * Dull, 
cream-colored, honey-bearing flowers formed in early summer on a nodding 
axillary peduncle (flower-stalk) which is united to a long and narrow leaf- 
like bract." Blossoms in June. 

The seeds are round, like a pea, grayish, ripening in October. When 
ready to fall they can be beaten down with a pole. After drying a few 
days, they should be planted in rich soil. They can also be propagated 
from shoots that spring up around the trunks of the forest tree, by shovel- 
ing soil upon them, and in two years they are well rooted. Layering is a 

successful method. ,, u j a 

The wood is white and tender, clean and beautiful when polished and 
varnished. It is used for boxes, carriage bodies, chair-seats, and is grow- 
ing popular even for floors. 



13 TPvEE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

The flowers of the lindens are special favorites for bees, and the honey 
thence extracted Is classed as of the best quality. It pays to raise them 
for honey alone; but other commercial values are so great we cannot af- 
ford to neglect planting extensively our basswood in every part of the state 



OLEACE/E.— ASH FAMILY. 

WHITE ASH, Fraxinus Americana. 

Common over the state. Frequent on the banks of our rivers and lakes, 
and on the edges and acclivities of swamps, scattered also on high drained 
grounds. A fine tree, straight trunk, often undivided to a height of forty 
feet or more. Bark is deeply furrowed on large stalks, checked into small 
squares, one to three inches in diameter. Leaves, opposite on their 
stalks, the green color on their upper surfaces, finely contrasting with the 
white underneath. 

The cylindrical seeds are about an inch long, gradually flattening into 
wings slightly notched on the ends. They grow in bunches four or five 
inches long. Ripe in October. 

In common with all the other ashes, its thriftiness and value are affected 
by the soil in which it is planted to a remarkable degree. In rich soil its 
wood is apt to be brittle; is tough and reedy in sandy soil, greatly enhanc- 
ing its value. When the wood is perfected, it is reddish; sap-wood is 
white. It is used for carriage shafts, wheel fellies, sledges, wheelbarrows, 
scythes, and other tool handles, butter boxes and firkins, sieves, wooden 
bowls, oars, barrels, etc. 

Prof. F. L. Budd, of Ames, Iowa, says : " A grove of ten acres thinned 
to six feet apart, containing 12,000 trees, at twelve years were eight 
inches in diameter, and thirty-five feet high, the previous thinning paying 
all expenses of planting and cultivation. Ten feet of the bodies of these 
trees were worth, for making bent stuff, etc., forty cents each, and the re- 
maining top ten cents, making a total of $6,000 as the profit of ten acres in 
twelve years, or a yearly profit of $50 per acre." 

J. Jay Smith reports that the leaves and branches of the white ash "are 
said to be poisonous to serpents and the leaf to cure their bite. An ash leaf 
rubbed upon the swellings caused by mosquitoes removes the itching and 
soreness immediately." 

RED ASH, F. pubescens. 

In the woodland regions it is quite extensive; "velvety shoots and leaf 
stalks; fruit flattish, two-edged seed-bearing body acute at the base, the 
edges gradually dilated into lance-linear or oblanceolate wing." Leaves 
twelve to fifteen inches long. Wood esteemed equal that of the White Ash. 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. IS 

BLACK ASH, F. sambucifolia. 

•' Occasionally plentiful throughout the state, excepting, perhaps, south- 
westward."— Z7p?iam. "Its northwestern limit reaches the southern part 
of Lake Winnipeg, and thence extends southward along the east side of 
the-Red River."— Betl. "Will develop magnificently on ground too wet for 
most any other timber, except it may be tamarac' --L. B. Hodges. Buds of a 
deep blue; young shoots a bright green in early spring. No calyx in the fertile 
flowers. Leaves have peculiar appendages on each side of their base, 
when first unfolding, but dropping off in a few weeks. In their full estate, 
they are twelve to fifteen inches long, "composed of three or four pairs of 
leaflets with an odd one." When bruised they emit an odor like the 
Elder. Seeds are flat, bunched and winged. Ripen In the fall. Bark a 
duller hue than that of the White Ash, and less deeply furrowed. Ripe 
wood of a fine texture and brown complexion; tougher and more elastic 
than the White Ash, but less durable. Growing more and more popular . 
for strong structures and furniture. More than any other species it devel- 
ops gnarls attached to the body of the tree. These excrescenses have sin- 
gular undulations, looking sometimes like clusters of little vines arranged 
in bowers. The wood of such is very beautiful when polished and var- 
nished. The ashes of this tree are rich in potash. Take it all in all it la 
deserving of special attention. 

BLUE ASH, F. qiiadrangulata. 

Rather a rare tree in our state, is found on the upper Mississippi, at 
Rainy Lake and other northern localities favorable to iis growth, and there 
often becomes one of the largest trees of the forest. The leaves are from 
twelve to fifteen inches long. "Square branchlets. * * Ovate veiny 
leaflets on short stalks, and narrowly oblong fruits." Its wood is the most 
highly esteemed of all the ash family, and most extensively used where 
toughness and beauty are required. A blue color, it is said, is extracted 
from its inner bark; and it is claimed that the milk of its boiled leaves is 
an unfailing remedy /or the bite of the rattlesnake. 

GREEN ASH, F. viHdis. 

The most frequent of all our ashes. Has the properties of the Red Ash, 
but is a smoother and smaller tree. Leaves vary from six to fifteen inches 
long. "The seeds of the green ash are frequently mistaken for those of 
the white ash, and sold as such by dealers. They can be readily distin- 
guished apart, however. The seed of the white ash has a long wing, and 
the seed pod itself is elongated. The green ash seed has a much shorter 
wing and the seed pod is not more than half as long as that of the white 
ash"— Hodges. Ripens in the fall. Though not a large tree, it will double 
its natural size by cultivation. "A true pioneer of the forests," says Dr. 
Warner, of Ohio, "soon to be planted on the plains, it spreads naturally 
into the native grass, and struggles through the prairie herbage that would 
destroy other trees." 



»4 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

BETULACE/E.— BIRCH FAniLY. 

The natural climate of the birches is in the northern parts of the east- 
ern and western continents. The cold is as natural to them as to the 
white bear of the Frigid Zone. Below the 43rd degree, north latitude, 
they dwindle into mediocrity. Michaux avers that there are as many 
species of the birch found in the United States as in Europe; "and, from 
my own observations on the comparative properties of their wood, the 
advantage appears to lie wholly on the side of the American species." 

J. Jay Smith, translator of Michaux, says the Earl of Huntington calls 
the birch an amphibious plant, "as it grows on rich or poor, wet or dry, 
sandy or rocky situations, nor refuses any soil or climate whatever." 

Most of the birches ripen their seeds in September or October. The 
birches follow in the wake of the forest fire, springing up as If by enchant- 
ment. In the woodlands of Europe, fifteen pounds of seed is sown upon an 
• acre. A common method there, has been to harrow up the ground fine 
and mellow, in the late fall, and cover by dragging over it a brushwood 
drag. Like all other forest seeds and plants, the birches at first need a 
shading against hot and dry suns. If the design is to sow in an open field, 
a good way is to mix it with winter rye, and treat as described, making the 
cereal crop pay on the forest expenses. This method would do on our 
woodland territory, but is questionable as to success on the wind-swept 
prairie. 

In the extreme northern part of Europe, the wood is used for the man- 
ufacture of almost all the implements of husbandry — wheels, bowls, plates, 
spoons, chairs, etc. In our country it is beginning to be better appreciat- 
ed than to use it up for fuel. Some of its species, the Canoe Birch es- 
pecially, has a wavy grain, beautiful for furniture. In Sweden, Norway 
and Finland much importance is attached to the bark from which is made 
pans, baskets, sandals and the like. The rustic people there make soles 
of it, and fix it in the crown of their hats for protection against dampness. 
The Laplanders use it in making the reindeer skin water-proof. In Rus- 
sia the bark of large trees Is burned in kilns or furnaces and thence an 
empyreumatic oil is obtained with which a leather is prepared which is 
highly esteemed for durability. When young and tender the leaves are 
given to domestic stock, and families use them as a substitute for tea, and 
dyers employ them in dyeing wool to a yellow luster. In the spring the 
sap of the birch is copious and is often boiled down to a delicious syrup. 

Susceptible to so many practical uses, and being so hardy and pretty, the 
birch deserves special attention. Speaking of its beauty, "Emerson re- 
marks." says J.Jay Smith," 'that no trees are more distinguished for their 
light and feathery foliage, and the graceful sweep of their limbs, than the 
birches; no family affords such a variety of aspect.' " Certainly no tree on 
our lawns is more attractive than the Weeping Cut-Leaved Birch — a Eu- 
ropean hybrid. 

BLACK BIRCH, Betula cuta. 
This is known as "Mountain Mahogany" in Virginia, and Sweet and 
Cherry Birch in New England and Canada It is not very plentiful with 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 15 

us. Dr. Bell says Minnesota is its northwestern limit. It is at its best in 
deep, loose, cool soil, and there will grow 60 to 70 feet In height and 
from two to three feet in diameter. It is one of the earliest trees to un- 
fold its buds. The flowers appear along with its leaves which resemble 
those of the cherry. "The leaves," says Dr. Gray, "are oblong ovate and 
somewhat heart-shaped, sharply doubly serrate all around." They are 
dotted with white and so are the smooth young shoots. Bruise them and 
they emit a sweet odor, and will retain this quality when dried and pre- 
served. It matures its seed about the first of November. The bark is 
smooth and grayish, much resembling that of the cherry tree. "When 
freshly cut, the wood," says Michaux, "is of a rosy hue which deepens by 
exposure to the light. Its grain is fine and close, whence it is susceptible 
of a brilliant polish; it possesses a considerable share of strength." It is 
sought for tables, bedsteads, panels, arm chairs, etc; It is a rapid grower. 
Its mahogany-like wood, its beauty of foliage, its odor of flower and leaf 
recommend it as a central figure in the park and lawn. 

YELLOW OR GRAY BIRCH, B. CUtca. 

Prof. Upham, quoting Prof. Winchell, says it is "common in the north 
half of the state and south of Sherburne county, reaching a height of 
seventy-five feet and diameter of three or four feet; rare in the big woods 
and southeast of Houston county." Dr. Gray reports the bark of the trunk 
as "yellowish gray and sornewhat silvery, separating in filmy layers." 
Sometimes the epidermis is rolled backward at the ends, attached only in 
the middle. Its golden yellow and graceful foliage render it very con- 
spicuous in the woods. Its fruiting catkins are short-oblong, the scales 
visibly downy under the lens. The seeds beneath the scales are small- 
winged, ripening about the first of October. The wood is not as deep 
shaded as the black birch, but is strong and handsome; makes good ox- 
yokes and frames of sledges. The bark is used in tanning. Take it all in 
all this tree possesses many merits and is deserving of special favor. 

RIVER OR RED BIRCH, B. rubra. 

This species is rarely found away from limpid streams and rivers. In 
middle age, when about ten inches in diameter, its epidermis is reddish or 
cinnamon colored. Like that of the Canoe Birch it can be divided into 
sheets. Ample in summit, thick branches, twigs long, flexible and pen- 
dulous. Leaves about three inches long, two broad; whitish beneath, 
green on the upper surface; edges deeply denticulated, pointed at summit. 
Seed ripens in June. 

The wood is nearly white, both in the sap and heart. Like that of the 
Juneberry it is marked longitudinally by red vessels intersecting each 
other in the different directions. Makes good trays. From its twigs 
stable and street brooms are manufactured. Its saplings are used for 
hoops to a good advantage. Unlike other birches it enjoys intense heat, 
but while it adapts itself to sunny elements it thrives in the north when 
protectingly environed. 



15 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

PAPER OR CANOE BIRCH, B. papyracia. 

Often abundant in the north half of the state; is plentiful in Renville 
county, especially in Birch Coolie; "is found," says Prof. Bell, "along the 
Assiniboine valley as far west as Qu' Appelle lakes." It likes the decliv:- 
ty of hills and does not refuse the bottoms of alluvial soil. 

Its limbs are slender and flexible, or a shiny brown and white dotted, 
while the body of the tree, especially when young, is as white as the wintry 
snow which it delights in. It is more papery than the so-called White 
Birch of less size. The leaves are of middle size, unequally denticulated, 
ovate, heart-shaped, dull beneath, dark green above; oblong, downy, short- 
stalked catkins; wings of fruit broad, ripening toward the middle of July. 

The sap-wood is perfectly white. When first laid open its heart is a 
reddish blue, glossy grained; speedily decays when subject to the extremes 
of dryness and moisture. It makes superior tables. Some sections of it 
are as beautiful as mahogany, and is much sought for special embellish- 
ment. Like its kin, the White Birch of Europe, its bark is used for various 
purposes. Before we had tarred paper, it was laid immediately beneath 
the shingles to the roofs of our houses. Pretty baskets are made of it, and 
fancy boxes and portfolios. From it the Indians construct berry boxes 
and sap buckets, and canoes, so light that they are easily transported on 
the shoulders from one lake or river to another. A most valuable tree 
this. 

Under the order of Betulaceae, we have the Low Birch or Tag Alder, 
common in the north half of the state; the Dwarf Birch, on the northern 
shore of Lake Superior, on the ridge east of the Red river, often compan- 
ionated with the Green or Mountain Alder. Under this head also is our 
Black Alder, quite extensive in the wooded north, and the rare Smooth 
Alder in the southeast. 



SAPINDACE>e.— HAPLE FAniLY. 

STRIPED MAPLE OR MOOSEWOOD, Acer Pcnnsylvaniana. 

"Common northeastward, extending south to the upper Mississippi and 
to southwestern Pine county." — Upham. "Rare and local farther south to 
Lake Pepin." — Miss Manning. It Is a small, pretty tree, having, as Prof. 
Gray describes, "light green bark,striped with dark lines, large thin leaves 
finely sharply serrate (toothed) all around, and at the end three sharp 
and very taper-pointed lobes, slender hanging racemes (flower clustered) 
of rather large green flowers, and fruit with diverging wings." At- 
tractive at all seasons. "One of the earliest trees to feel the approach of 
spring." Ripens its seed about the first of October. 

MOUNTAIN MAPLE, A. Spicatum. 

"Common north of Lake Superior and along the international boundary; 
extends south to Mille Lacs." — Upham. It is also found elsewhere par- 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 17 

ticularly southward on the Mississippi bluffs. Grows from twenty to thirty 
feet high. Has "slightly three-lobed and coarsely toothed leaves, downy 
beneath, and upright dense racemes of small flowers, followed by small 
fruits with diverging narrow wings." Its beauty is most conspicuous in 
autumn when its leaves have "various rich shades of red, with seeds yel- 
lowish," then ripening and ready to fall. Growing naturally on high- 
lands, delighting in the cold, it must be hardy enough for our prairies, 
mixed with large trees for wind-breaks. 

SUGAK MAPLE, A. saccharinum. 

Known also as Hard and Rock Maple. Not indigenous in the western 
prairie part of the state, but common in oiir native woods, except near 
the shore of Lake Superior. "According to Bell," says Prof. Upham, 
"the northern limit of this tree extends from the lower part of the valley 
of the Krfministiquia river westward a little to the north of the boundary 
line to the Lake of the Woods, where it turns south." It is a tree of the 
north, mostly abounding in the states and Canada between the 43d and 
49th parallel. It likes to live on the mountain sides, on the crest of hills, 
in cold, humid valleys, but everywhere demands fertile soiL Will attain 
seventy to eighty feet and proportional diameter. Its bark is grayish 
white. 

Leaves about five inches broad, varying in length according to age and 
vigor. They are attached opposite each other on long stalks, palmated 
(like the hand with outstretched fingers), five-lobed, bright green above, 
whitish underneath. The first touches of autumnal frost turns them red. 
"Calyx bell-shaped and hairy-fringed."— Gray. "Flowers small, yellowish, 
suspended by slender, drooping peduncles. Seeds contained in two cap- 
sules united at the base and terminated by a membranous wing " — Mich- 
aux. Seeds ripen in October, but mature only once in two or three years. 

When first cut, the wood Is white, but when long exposed to the light 
assumes a rosy tinge. Grain is close and fine; sllken-lustered; strong and 
heavy: is not durable as the oak; quickly decays in moisture. It makes 
good axle trees, wheel-spokes, sled runners, chairs, desks, etc. 

bird's-eye maple. 

This also is the Hard or Sugar Maple — not common. Its undulations are 
like those of the Curly Maple; has spots — "bird's eyes" — about half a line 
in diameter; sometimes contiguous and then apart. Very much esteemed 
by cabinet makers. The more numerous the spots, the more beautiful and 
valuable is the wood. 

TAPPING TO DEATH. 

The treatment the sugar maples are receiving from resident whites and 
Indians is unpardonable. Having ax-stabbed them for sugar for the last 
quarter of a century, the large trees are rotting out, and such may as well 
be used for fuel. But spare the young growth by keeping out the fires and 
imprisoning the men and boys who cut them for camp fires. 

The Sugar Maple resists the wind well. It can be raised on the prairie 
from seed planting, especially when amply protected by the ash, willow, 



18 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

elm, and box-elder trees. The Black Sugar Maple is a very pretty variety. 
It prevails more in the southern than the northern part of the state. Its 
bark is black, specked with white, contrasting prettily with its densely 
green and tufted foliage. 

WHITE MAPLE, A. dasycarpum. 

Also called the Soft Silver and River Maple. Indigenous to nearly every 
part of the state, but rare in the northwestern portion; abundant on the 
alluvial bottoms of the upper Mississippi and its tributaries, and on other 
northeastern waters. It blooms early; flowers greenish ; destitute of 
petals; fruit woolly when young, soon smooth, developing to oval-shaped 
seeds with great diverging wings. Ripen in June. Trunk low and 
stalky; many limbed; divergent, spacious head, opening well to the sun- 
light. Its foliage is magnificent. Leaves deeply five-lobed; silvery white 
and downy beneath; densely green above. Note them as they tremble in 
the wind, aflame with their brilliant white and green — a life-moving pict- 
ure of light and shade. Its sap is saccharine, yielding but half the sugar 
product of the Hard Maple — measure for measure as it flows from the 
trees. The wood is white and fine-grained, soft and light; serves well in 
cabinet making, and is growing more and more in favor; makes the best of 
charcoal. Rightly managed is a success on our prairies, but needs the 
protection of other trees, for its limbs are apt to split down in our heavy 
winds. Pruning of this tree should be on its laterals, carefully preserving 
the central stem. 

RED FLOWERING OR SWAMP MAPLE, A. ruhrum. 

Abounding through the east part of the state, about Redwood Falls, in 
Winona county and White Earth reservation; extends west to Mead-Port- 
age on the Dawson route, north of Lake Superior. It clings to the borders 
of running streams and not infrequently to the miry swamps, and yet grows 
on the elevated ground with the oaks and butternuts. It is the earliest to 
blossom, unfolding about a fortnight before the leaves. The blossoms are 
a deep red and so are the twigs. Unlike the other maples, they are with- 
out stalks to divide from at the extremity of the branches. The eaves are 
three to five-lobed, whitish underneath, irregular-toothed. Fruit also 
reddish, slightly spreading wings. When young the bark is smooth, 
marked with white blotches; when it has attained twenty-five or thirty 
feet high, the bark becomes brown and chapped. Sugar is manufactured 
from its sap. The heart of the wood projects into the sappy portions in 
the form of an irregular star, making it very pretty. The wood in general 
is harder than that of the White Maple, is finer and closer grained, sus- 
ceptible of a glossy surface. Nothing is more beautiful when polished and 
varnished. It is used in manufacturing the staves and spokes of spinning 
wheels, saddle-trees, yokes, shovels, domestic wooden ware. In some very 
old trees the grain is undulated, known as Curly Maple, often having vary- 
ing shades that are very beautiful. The cellular tissue of this maple is a dull 
red. When boiled it turns to a purplish color; then apply a solution of 
sulphate of iron, and it is a dark blue. With alum it is used in dyeing 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 19 

black. Its peculiarities command attention, and its augmenting utilities 
in the manufacturing and chemical arts entitle it to special planting and 
protection. ^ 

ASH-LEAVED MAPLE OR BOX ELDER, Neguudo aceroides. 

This is one of our reliable pioneer trees. Indigenous to the whole state 
where our native woods abound, except at the extreme north, but can be 
propagated there, for it is a success across the boundary line in Manitoba 
In the alluvial soils of the upper Mississippi, Otter Tail and some of the 
other northern rivers, it sometimes attains two to three feet in diameter 
It IS characterized with green twigs, drooping clusters of small greenish 
flowers coming out earlier than the leaves. Even when growing in our 
native woods it tends to a broad head with dense foliage; hence one of our 
best shade-needing trees. It sprouts largely from the crown of its roots 
interlacing among its companions, climbing to the light, and therefore 
forms a very compact and solid wind-break. This and the ashes and elms 
belong in the list of the reliable trees of the prairied West. As yet it is 
not much used in the manufacturing arts. The seeds are encased in long 
shells protruding into rudder-like wings. Sugar and syrup of excellent 
quality can be made from its sap. 



JUQLANDACE/E.-WALNUT FAHILY. 



BUTTERNUT, J. ciueHa. 



otherwise called the Oil Nut and White Walnut. Once common south- 
ward; mostly cut off there for lumber, yet quite extensive on the Snake 
and upper Mississippi rivers and their tributaries. It is a national tree 
belonging mainly in the north. It generally branches out at a small 
height, mostly horizontal, forming a large tufted head in fine balance 
When young it resembles the Black Walnut, but they are unlike in maturi- 
ty-especially in the woods-the Butternut being light in weight; of little 
strength and reddish in color, while the Black Walnut is heavier, stronger 
and of a dark color. No panels are prettier than the butternut It is a 
very popular wood for furniture and house finishing. Vegetates early in 
the springy Each leaf has seven to eight pairs of leaflets with a terminal 
odd one. They are lance-like, toothed and slightly downy. The barren 
flowers in single catkins are attached to the shoots of the preceding year- 
the fertile flowers on shoots of the same spring, and at their extremes' 
The fruit IS commonly single, oily and palatable. The nut itself is hard* 
oblong, ronnd at the base, pointed at summit; the surface furrowed ir- 
regular y and rough. The bark possesses medical properties, regarded as 
the best of cathartics. The tree is hardy; will do well even on the pralHe 



20 TESE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

under protection of other trees. Is a rapid grower. Ripens its seeds in 
the early fall; should be planted just before the ground freezes up for 
winter. 

BLACK WALNUT, J. nigra. 

Indigenous in the southern half of the state. But few timber slzod 
trees now left; young trees springing up where they can; some of our south- 
ern farmers are wisely planting large orchards of them on the prairie. 
With protective environments can be made a fair success between the 45th 
and 47th parallel. Leaves about eighteen inches long; number of leaflets 
about same as the butternut. The set relation of the flowers are the 
same. Fruit is rounder than that of the butternut; odoriferous, uneven 
on surface, appears at the extremity of the branches sometimes seven to 
eight inches in circumference. Husk is thick. Nut is hard, compressed 
at sides, grooved into deep furrows. Pith is in plates, sweet, agreeable, 
but not equal to that of the European Walnut. In other respects our 
American Black Walnut is superior to the European. Seed ripens in the 
fall. The bark on old trees is deeply furrowed, thick and blackish. "The 
duramen of the wood is compact and heavy, of a deep violet color surround- 
ed with a white alburnum." — Wood. On exposure to the air the duramen 
(ripe wood) becomes nearly black, and the alburnum (sap) speedily decays. 
Very strong and tenacious; does not warp or split v/hen thoroughly season- 
ed. Admits of a fine polish. The curly walnut is incomparably beautiful. 
The ripe wood is not liable to be attacked by worms; is used in naval 
architecture in cabinet work, in musket stocks, etc. The husks of the 
fruit make a good dye for woolen stuffs. All things considered it is one of 
our most valuable trees and should be extensively planted. 

HICKORIES. 

These belong with the Walnut family. The Shell-bark or Shag-bark Hick- 
ory, Caya alba, is indigenous to Houston, Winona, Filmore, Mower, Free- 
born, Oimstead and some other southern counties; seldom found north of 
these counties, except where specially planted. 

The bark on mature trunks is very shaggy, having rough strips. Like 
that of the Yellow Birch the narrow plates bend outward at the ends, and 
adhere in the middle. Amid the shade of other trees the trunk is des- 
titute of branches for three-quarters of its length, and nearly uniform in 
size. Will grow eighty to ninety feet high and yet be not over two feet in 
diameter. The fruit ripens in the early part of October. Late fall 
planting is the more successful way of management. It is round, divided 
into four seams which readily open at maturity. The nut in this quarto- 
divisional epicarp is comparatively small, having four angles corresponding 
with the divisions of the thick husk. The kernel is sweeter than any 
of the American Walnuts except the Pecan-nut. The Shell-bark hickory nuts 
bring a good price in the market. Like that of all the other hickories, 
the wood is elastic, strong and tenacious. Has fine rift. It is used for 
the keels of vessels, hoops, whip-stalks, ax-handles, etx:. The tree endures the 
most intense cold. Why is it not more largely planted? 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SERUBS. 21 

OUR OTHER lIICKdRIES. 

In our Big Woods, extending north to Snake river, is the Pig-nut or 
Broom Hickory, C. porce?ia. (Niitt.) Juglans OLabra. {Willd.) It grows to 
a magnificent tree. Its wood is reputed to be the strongest and most 
tenacious of all our hickories. We have also the Bitter-nut, C. amara, 
more extensive than the former; found on the tributaries of the St. Croix, 
St. Louis and along the water courses of the upper Mississippi. The 
woodmen work up its wood into various tools for lumbering and farming 
operations. Their nuts are inferior to the Shell-bark. Though all our 
hickories are liable to be worm-eaten and easily decay, they are valuable 
trees, hardy, and should have a deserving place in our forestry work. 



SALICACE/E.— WILLOW FAHILY. 

Prof. J. H. Winchell in his Geological report of 1883, as compiled by 
Prof. Warren Uphara, enumerates fifteen species of native willows regis- 
tered for Minnesota. Since then others have doubtless been discovered. 
We have four as here given that grow to trees. Nearly all our willows 
naturally grow In humid situations, along our water shores where they 
serve the useful purpose of preventing the erosion and waste of the soil. 
The bark of most of them contains a medical property about as efifectual 
in intermittent fevers as the Peruvian bark. Botanists find the willow 
family as among the most difficult to discriminate. The distinction 
obtains principally in the variability of their stamens, leaf appearances 
and seed vessels. Their flowers are generally dioecious, that is, a class of 
plants whose sex-flowers are on two different: individuals, as opposed to 
monascia, with two sorts of flowers on different parts of the same plant. 
Their seeds, developed in catkins, are very numerous; hence the willows 
multiply very rapidly. 

BLACK WILLOW, SuUx nigra. 

A river tree, growing thirty or more feet high; usually divides into large 
limbs »t a short distance up the trunk. Leaves long and narrow, A 
decoction of the roots is pronounced a good purifier of the blood. 

The Myrtle Willow myrtiliodes, has its merits, rare southward, frequent 
northward, even north of Lake Superior. A good protection against Polar 
winds. 

Long-Leaved Willow, S. longifolio. There seems to be some confusion 
among botanists as to the identity of this willow. Gray mentions it as "a 
low shrub or a low tree." Nuttall, dating from his observations in Oregon, 
speaks of it as a large tree: "No willow on the American continent present? 
remarkable and splendid an appearance." It has a very different aspect 
from this in Minnesota, if indeed it is the same species. It is our Sand-bar 
willow, common throughout the state. 



22 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

ALMOND-LKAVED WILLOW, iS. amygloides. 

Abounds in the Red River Valley and thence eastward. It attains a 
tree-like size, peculiarly attractive. Prof. M. B. Webb, in Wheeler's re- 
ports of surveys west of One Hundredth Meridian, thus credits it: "The 
broad leaves, being supported by long and slender petioles, are moved by 
the slightest breeze, displaying in rapid, fluttering succession their con- 
spicuous white under surfaces, thus producing an effect in striking con- 
trast with the changeless, soft light reflected from masses of the foliage of 
the S. nigra when swayed gently by the wind." 

WHITE WILLOW, S. alba. 

Originally from Europe; much cultivated; is very valuable on the prairie 
for shade and protection from the wind; hardy and reliable; grows 
rapidly; yields good fuel; pays well to raise it. Propagated from seeds or 
cuttings. 

OTHER VALUABLE SORTS. 

Among our weeping willows recommended for ornamental purposes, are 
the Kilmarnock and American. 

Willows from Russia and other parts of Europe are introduced, some of 
them really valuable. 

J. L. Budd, L. R. Moyer, Dewain Cook, G. W. Fuller, S. B. Green, and 
other foresters speak in high praise of the Laurel-Leaved (Salix laiiri- 
folia)., The sOjUx fragilis, a cutifolia &nd rosmarinifolia &iso have special 
merits. 



POPLARS. 

The name Poplar to this tribe of trees was suggested from the historic 
fact that, "in ancient times, the public places of Rome were decorated 
with rows of Poplar; whence it came to be called arbor populU as to being 
a tree peculiarly appropriated to the people. 

AMERICAN POPLAR OR ASPEN, Populus tremulotdes. 

Abounds especially northward. This small tree blossoms the latter 
part of April, appearing ten to twelve days before the leaves. The 
catkins, springing from the extremity of the branches, have silky plumes 
on them. Leaves are about two inches broad, narrow at the summit, dark 
green in color; in the spring red-veined; on young shoots large, heart- 
shaped and pointed; on older stocks becomes round, irregular toothed. 
Having such shapes, and suspended on long petioles, they tremble in the 
gentlest breeze. 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 23 

LARGE ASPEN, P. gvandidentata. 

Less common than the preceding, but a larger tree. Has a straight 
trunk, smooth greenish bark, rarely cracked: branches scattered and few, 
foliaged at their extremities. Leaves nearly round, smooth on both sides 
and bordered with large teeth. Catkins about six inches long, appearing 
in the infancy of the leaves, then thickly coated with down. 

The two aspens here mentioned, vast in quantity in the northern wood- 
lands are not utilized with the spruces for wood pulp for paper-making, 
etc., and with the other poplars are manufactured into boxes. 

BALSAMIC POPLAR, TACAMAHAC, P. balsamifera. 

Common in the northern woods. A middle sized tree; "has round or 
scarcely angled branchlets, very glutinous and pleasantly balsamic strong 
scented bud-scales, and ovate, or lanceolate gradually tapering leaves." — 
Gray. • 

' The hardiest of the poplars; not so pretty as the other species. It 
extends far into the north. The greater part of the drift-wood is this poplar 
found on the shores of the Arctic ocean. 'Tallas states," says the trans- 
lator of Michaux, "that the grouse and other birds of that family that 
feed on the buds of this Poplar during winter, have their flesh imbued 
with a grateful balsamic flavor." 

BALM OF GiLEAD, P. bolsamifera, var. caiidicans. 

Frequent northward, sometimes scattered but oftener in groups. Among 
the environs of the upper Mississippi, it becomes a magnificent tree. One 
such was found on the St. Louis waters,so stated to the writer by a reliable 
explorer, growing six feet in diameter and not less than a hundred feet 
high. It is very hardy, adapting itself to any soil. 

Trunk smooth-rifted, greenish bark, dark green foliage, tufted; branches 
irregular. Leaves three times larger than the preceding, and heart-shaped. 
The tree is literally saturated with water; wood requires a long time to 
season. Roots spread inveterately. Agreeable when budding, but when 
the sticky buds fall off, the tree is a nuisance in a lawn. The balsamic 
property is healthy. 

LOMBARDY POPLAR, P. dUatata. 

"Stiff wiry tree, with closely oppressed branches, and small broadly 
triangular pointed leaves formerly much planted from the Old World." 
Not reliable. 

WHITE OR SILVER LEAF POPLAR, P. albci. 

European originally, now growing spontaneous. Is a fast grower and 
massive. "Spreading branches, roundish, slightly heart-shaped, wavy- 
toothed or lobed leaves, soon green above, very cottony beneath." — Oray. 
One of our best Is the Norway Poplar. Laurel-Leaved and other European 
species, are valuable. 



24 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

COTTONWOOD, P. monUifera. 

We have two varieties of the cottoiiwood, the White and the Yellow, the 
latter having the better gift; both equally hardy. A very rapid grower to 
massive size and shade, it formerly ranked as first choice for prairie plant' 
ing, but it is classed now on the descending scale, for our rainfall and 
moisture are not equal to its monopolistic demand. On alluvial and other 
moist soils it is a fine success. 

Catkins or tassels are long, flexible, pendulous. Seeds enveloped in 
white plumy cotton; buds resinous, aromatic and agreeable. When the 
seeds are ripe, in June, the winds bear their cottony down in all direc- 
tions, lodging where they can. M. De Foucault, a French botanist, cor- 
rectly says: "The leaves are deltoid, or trowel-shaped, approaching to 
cardiform (heart-shaped), always longer than they are broad, glabrous, 
smooth, having no hairs and unequally toothed; the petioles are compressed 
and of a yellowish green, and two glands of the same color as the base; 
the branches are angular, and the angles form whitish lines which persist 
even in the adult age of the tree." 

Like the other leading poplars the wood of the cottonwood is growing 
in demand, and as a tree will never cease to be in public favor. Propagat- 
ed from cuttings, and so with t^ll the poplars. 



CONIFER/E.— PINE FAMILY. 

What distinguishes the pines from other families is the homogeneity of 
their fibres (no ducts), their needle or awl-shaped leaves, their scaly cat- 
kins or woody cones, their resinous juices. They will grow on most of our 
drained soils. Not being tap-rooted, strictly speaking, they do not neces- 
sarily require deep soil. As their leaves are small, they do not evaporate 
moisture very rapidly, as do some of the deciduous trees; hence will sur- 
vive on dry soils where some other trees will perish. They need to be in 
masses for mutual protection, where exposed to high winds. Propagated 
from seeds, maturing in autumn. The pine families excel all others in 
practical values. 

JACK PINE, Pinus Danksiana. 

Known also as Black, Gray and Norway Scrub Pine. Extends farther 
north than any other American Pine, even to Hudson Bay, where it grows 
but about three feet high. It abounds in the sandy and barren regions of 
northern Minnesota. In some localities they form very thick woods, un- 
supported by other trees, save here and there a red pine. A coarse-grained 
tree, very resinous, excellent fuel; seldom cut for lumber; makes second- 
tlass railroad ties. Ordinarily not a large tree. Flowers in April and 
May. Branches long, flexible and spreading. Leaves an inch long; cones 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 25 

In pairs usually, adhering closely to the branches, like so many horns. 
Seeds remain in their scaly covers two or three years before dropping out. 

NORWAY OR RED PINE, P. resinosa. 

Specially northern, sometimes scattered, but mostly in groaps. A spir- 
ing tree, straight trunk, towering up 40 to 50 feet or more to where the 
limbs ramify. Excellent for piles, wharves, bridge piers, masts, etc. 
Our lumbermen distinguish two varieties— the Hard, or Pig-iron Nor- 
way, of thick sap and often so hard as to turn the edges of an ax, and the 
Red-Barked or Timber Norway, with less sap and softer ripewood, and its 
bark more in plates. Valuable as a lumber tree for special purposes. 
Leaves a dark green, five or six Inches long, united in pairs at the extrem- 
ity of the branches. Female flowers bluish, cones thornless, about two 
inches long, round at base, pointed at summit. Sheds the seeds the first 
year. This beautiful tree is hardy and vigorous. Recommendable for 
farm and lawn. 

WHITE PINE, P. strobus. 

The white pines are our principal lumbering trees, the largest and most 
useful, growing often from 80 to 125, and, rarely, 150 feet high, and from 
three to six feet in diameter. The elevated and broken region north of 
latitude 46 degrees, and east of the meridian of the outlet of Red Lake, 
including an area of 21,000 square miles, is the pine lumber territory of 
Minnesota. The principal pine forests stretch in a broad belt in this great 
district, nearly north of said parallel. Lumbermen mention two varieties 
of this species, the Pumpkin Pine, more yellow in ripewood, and the Sap- 
ling pine, of thicker sap and whiter ripewood. The saplings are far the 
more numerous. Leaves five-fold, four inches long, slender, of a bluish 
green, delicate and beautiful. Cones long, cylindrical, pendant longer 
than the leaves. Seeds thin shelled and, winged, usually dropping out in 
October. The preservation of this and the Red Pine species from the 
hands of the spoiler, is a matter of practical consideration. It is indeed 
sad to contemplate its extinction from our native woodlands, a fatality 
sure to befall us unless the government hastens to prevent it. 

BLACK DOUBLE SPRUCE, Picea nigra. 

Common in the northeast woodlands, mostly found in the swamps, and 
there stunted and forbidding, and of little use, save as a shield with the 
mosses against undue evaporation of water there conserved. In favorable 
localities will grow to a magnificent tree, seventy feet or more high. Its 
wood is white, light, strong and elastic; makes good spars and knees of 
vessels. When free from knots is used for sounding boards to musical 
instruments. From the bark of. the young branches is made the spruce 
beer. The Black Spruce attains its best condition in humid, deep soil, 
covered with thick mosses. It is pyramidal in form, and very pretty. 
Leaves a dark green, firm and numerous. Flowers appear at the extrem- 
ities of the smallest branches; small, reddish, oval cones; winged seeds, 
ripening in tlie late fall. 



26 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

WHITE OR SINGLE SPRUCE, P. albci. 

Common, yet scattered northward; grows on drained soils; sometimes 
attains to two or three feet in diameter, spiring up majestically in a clean 
tapering trunk, handsomely tufted in a pyramidal form. Flowers in 
May; needle-like leaves, about half an inch long, covering all sides of the 
branches; cones small and pretty; scales loose and thin; seeds fall out the 
first of the winter. A tree of longevity and one of the hardiest of the 
conifers. It differs from the Black Spruce in that its leaves are less nu- 
merous, longer and more pointed, and their color paler; being a bluish 
green, like those of the White Pine. The seeds are smaller than those of 
the Black, but the cones are more elongated; and the bark is lighter col- 
ored. When macerated in water, the fibres of the roots, like those of the 
Larch, are flexible and tough, used by Indians to stitch together their 
birch bark canoes. A tree of special value, which, with the Black Spruce 
and poplars, is used for wood pulp. Belongs with the " survival of the 
fittest." 

HEMLOCK SPRUCE OR HEMLOCK, Tsuga Canadensis. 

Scarce; a few, it is said, are growing on the St. Louis waters and upper 
Mississippi in Itaska county. Is pretty when young, grand in maturity. 
Wood of old trees is shaky; used for roof boards, studding, etc. 

BALSAM FIR, Abies bulsamea. 

A small northern tree, found mainly in groups. In our wild woodlands 
is apt to be heart-rotted and hollow, but not so when planted in good 
soil. Handsome when young, pyramidal and graceful. Leaves narrow 
and flat; bright green above, white beneath. Cones cylindrical. Wood 
makes excellent butter firkins and the like. A popular tree for the lawn. 
Blisters form on the smooth bark containing an agreeable balm, used con- 
siderably in certain stages of pulmonary diseases. 

AMERICAN OR BLACK LARCH, Lavix Americana. 

This tree, known also as Tamarac and Hacmatac, is common in most all 
our swamp lands; grows naturally also on drier hard ground. A magni- 
ficent tree, straight, slender trunk, sometimes 60, 80 and even 100 feet in 
height, two to three feet in diameter. Branches near the summit; bark 
smooth as if polished; leaves flexible, in bunches, shed in the fall; renewed 
in the spring. Male and female flowers separate on same tree, as with the 
pines. 

Wood very strong and durable. Largely used for knees to vessels in the 
East. Constitutes first-class railroad ties, surpassed only by the white 
oak. Preference obtains for the European species, but it is questionable 
whether, in all instances, the American is not better for America. A most 
valuable tree is our larch, but wofully neglected to be devoured by our 
forest fires. The Hursery sort grown from seeds will do well in our cul- 
tivated ravines and fiells. 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 27 

AMERICAN ARBOR viT^, Thuya occidentalis. 

The Arbor Vitie, or White Cedar, belongs mainly to our almost im- 
penetrable swamps of the North, there forming a perfect net-work of roots 
that, with the mosses, cover every knoll and rock and rotten log. Grows 
also on drained, moist soils, and there of the best qualities. Its aromatic 
wood is light and durable; used for shingles, telegraph poles, posts, street 
paving, pails, tubs, churns, etc.; when well seasoned best of lampblack. 
Precious little care is bestowed upon its preservation. For lawns, screens 
and hedges nothing excels it. Its foliage is a perpetual evergreen. 

RED CEDAR, OR COMMON JUNIPER, Junipevus commuTiis. 

Indigenous throughout the wooded portions of the state, but not fre- 
quent. The variety alpina is found on the north shore of Lake Superior. 
A shrub tree six to eight feet high, growing in dry woods and hills, often 
forming a slender pyramid. This and the Yew (Ground Hemlock) growing 
in the same region, are indeed desirable; also the Red Cedar, or Red Savin 
or SaUna, var procumbens, trailing over the rocky banks and grounds, 
along our northern borders. It has scale-shaped, acute leaves, "the fruit 
nodding on the short peduncle-like recurved branchlets." Is hardy and 
hedgy. 

RED CEDAR TREE, J. Virginktufui. 

Indigenous to the greater part of the state, most frequent in the south- 
east; "rare near the west side and north of Lake Superior. Found scanti- 
ly in exposed situations, as on the bluffs or shores of rivers and lakes, 
growing to be ten to twenty-five feet high."— ZJp^m. Foliage evergreen, 
subdivided numerously, composed of tiny sharp scales enclosed in one an- 
other. When bruised, emits a resinous, aromatic odor. "Flowers incon- 
spicuous, the staminate In oblong, terminal aments; the fertile on separate 
trees, producing small, bluish berries, covered with a white powder."— 
Wood. Seeds mature in the early fall. 

The wood is a bright red tint; sap perfectly white; odorous, compact, 
fine-grained, stronger than the White Cedar. Highly esteemed for cabinet 
work and manufacture of pencils; growing scarcer and higher priced. So 
hardy and branchy it should have special attention paid it in prairie 
forestry. 

NON-INDIGENOUS EVERGREENS. 

The Norway Spruce, Scotch and Austrian Pine (European) are popular 
trees in Minnesota, and yet, all qualities considered, they do not excel our 
native ones. The Colorado Blue Spruce, Picea jnitvgeus, and Bull Pine, 
Pi/nus ponderosa, have promise of success for prairie planting. 

THE QUESTION TO SOLVE. 

Our valuable pines, our spruces, our larches, our cedars, that have 
brought us wealth and comfort immeasurable, serving as a primal factor of 



28 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

our very civilization — shall they be preserved with our hardwoods for per- 
petual forests to bless our succQSsors?^ The question is pressing; and our 
legislature must solve it. 

RED BUD OR JUDAS TREE, Civcis CanadeTisis. 

Rare locally in southeastern counties; planted in some of our lawns. Is 
small and handsome. Flowers numerous, colored like peach blossoms; 
ripening into pods scarcely stalked in the calyx. Rounded leaves and 
somewhat pointed. 

KENTUCKY COFFEE TREE, Gymnoclodus Canadensis. 

Rarely indigenous in Houston, Winona, Scott, Blue Earth, Nicollet, 
Brown and other southern counties. In our state seldom exceeds six or 
eight inches in diameter; farther south jgrows twice as large and fifty to 
sixty feet high. Straight trunk, tufted foliage. Wood very hard, straight- 
grained, of a rosy hue. On young, healthy trees, the leaves, doubly com- 
pound, are three feet long and about twenty inches wide. Leaflets, op- 
posite, are oval shape and pointed; of a dull green. 

Large flowers, diwdous, pods bowed, reddish brown, hard gray seed. 
Plant in the fall just after they ripen. Beautiful foliage; wood very val- 
uable for cabinet work. A tree this of special merits. 

WILD BLACK CHERRY, Pvunus scrotiua. 

Common except in the far north. Grows to good size in rich soil. 
Trunk regular; bark block-like and rough, bitter and aromatic-medicinal. 
Wood dull light red tint, deepening with age; fibre brilliant, compact, 
fine-grained, seldom warps when well seasoned; much valued by the 
cabinet maker, preferable even to the Black Walnut. Leaves are smooth, 
lance-oblong, taper-pointed, having incurved short callous teeth. Flowers 
spiked, white, beautiful. Fruit the size of a large pea, purplish black, 
vinous-bitter, yet quite palatable. Nice for birds, saving our more val- 
uable crops. A tree of beauty and very valuable for furniture. Is hardy 
but needs support of other trees. Seeds ripen in autumn, and should 
then be planted. 

LOCUST TREE, P. seuda acacia. 

This adventive tree belongs now with us. Light foliage; each leaf is 
composed of opposite leaflets from eight to twelve with an odd one at the 
summit; thin and so smooth dust cannot adhere to them. Flowers hang 
in pendulous bunches clearly white and very fragrant. Five or six black 
or brown seeds ripen in flat pods about three inches long, which often 
hang on till late in the winter. Bark very thick and furrowed. Young trees 
are armed with thorns disappearing in maturity. In the main the wood 
has a greenish-yellow, streaked with brown veins; hard, compact, strong; 
endurable under all circumstances. Best qualities have a red heart. Owing 
to difference in color of the heart, arising probably from soil conditions, 
the tree is variously known as Red, Green, White and Black Locust. Very 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 29 

beautiful when polished. Is a good substitute for the Box-wood; is often 
manufactured into domestic ware, such as sugar-bowls salt-cellars, spoons, 
etc. It is not recommendable as an ornamental tree to stand alone. Its 
branches break easy in the wind; its limbs are illy balanced and shade 
scanty. All over the United States and the Canadas, it is attacked by a 
worm that eats into the heart and kills the tree prematurely. When thus 
bored into and wind-disheveled, it presents a most forbidding aspect. If 
hunters would spare the wookpeckers we could have the locusts in our 
forests and planted groves for marketable purposes. No species of trees 
furnish so valuable posts and railroad ties, when not worm-eaten. 
The Roee Flowering, Yellow-wood, Sweet and Water Locusts have special 
merits. 



HARDY SHRUBS. 

In his twelfth annual report of the Geological and Natural History Sur~ 
vey of Minnesota, Prof. Winchell, through Prof. Upham, acting as assist- 
ant, says, p. 183: "Of , the 412 species in Sargent's Catalogue of the Forest 
Trees of North America (north of Mexico), 81 occur indigenously in Min- 
nesota; but eight of these, though becoming trees in some portions of the 
United States, do not here attain a tree-like size or habit of growth, while 
forty-eight become large trees, at least forty to fifty feet high. Besides 
these, about 125 indigenous shrubs belong to this flora, making its whole 
number of wooded plants about 206. 

In the same catalogue of the total number of plants in Minnesota, Prof. 
Winchell enumerates 1,650, one-twelfth of which consists of introduced 
species, belonging to 557 genera, and representing 118 families or orders. 
Since then Conway MacMillan, Professor of Botany, in the University, 
adding to the list by virtue of further research, estimates that we have 
1,750 seed-producing plants, 75 species and varieties of ferns, club mosses 
and allied ferns, 700 mosses and liverworts, 2,500 fungi, 800 algse, 250 
lichens. The work of collection is by no means finished. There are 
numerous species and varieties, new to science, waiting discovery "in 
neglected nooks, in marsh, in dense woods, cool ravines, on cliffs and hills, 
in streams and lakes." 

The author of this compilation has included in his descriptive enumer- 
ation of indigenous trees (real) some of our large shrubs referred to by 
Prof. Upham. As there are other shrubs of smaller sizes which are necessa- 
ry to complete genuine forestry, serving as protective supports to our large 
trees, some of them are here summarily mentioned as hardy and reliable. 
Without shrubs of some sort mixed in with our trees, we cannot reasonably 
expect success in our cold and hot windy climate. They should be planted 
and fostered in our forest clumps and wind-breaks; and as a source of 
|uxury and profit, it is well to select such as bear berries for the market 



30 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

and table. These especially are here catalogued. Certain introduced 
species are included, but only such as have been tested as adaptable to our 
climate, some of which are recommended by Prof. Green, of our Experi- 
ment Station at St. Anthony Park. 

HAZEL NUT, Cavylus Americana and rastrata. 

Common in the woodlands. The latter is so hardy as to grow on the 
north of Lake Superior, where the shrub is weighty with fruit. 

HIGH BUSH CRANBERRY, Vibumum OpUlUS. 

Native, vigorous and hardy; grows from four to ten feet high; white 
flowers in June; clusters of yellow and red edible fruit hanging on into the 
winter. Grown from seed, cuttings or layers. 

BURNING BUSH, Euonymus roperpureno. 

A tall shrub indigenous to the southern part of the state, extending 
north into Anoka, Kandiyohi, Clay and other counties on like parallel. 
Can be safely planted all over the state except in the extreme north. 
Contrasting with other shrubs, it is desirable for the lawn. Would serve 
a valuable purpose in our planted groves and underbreak as brushwood 
protection to our principal trees, and so the Trailing Strawberry Bush 
which has long trailing branches. 

COMMON BARBERRY, BerMs vulgavis. 

It is strong, prickly, suitable for a small, loose hedge; yellow flowers in 
June; red fruit; very hardy. Other varieties are the Purple-Leaved and 
Thunborg's barberry. Grown from seeds that ripen in autumn. 

SIBERIAN PEA TREE, Carogaua arborescens. 

Close, neat, locust-like leaves, and bright yellow, pea-shaped flowers; 
pretty; one of the hardiest. Grown from seeds that ripen in autumn. 

NINE BARK, Physocarpiis opiUfqliua. 

Grows strong, six to ten feet high; clustered flowers in late June; makes 
good screens. Grows from cuttings a-nd seed. The Golden Spiroea excels 
for its graceful form and golden green leaves. 

ALDER LEAVED BUCKTHORN, RaVfinUS auifoUuS 

Is a shrub-tree, rare southward in Minnesota, common northward, 
found largely in the St. Croix river regions, and the beach of Lake Superior 
and Lake of the Woods. Leaves oval, acute at summit, their margins 
pointing forward like saw teeth. Flowers greenish, axillary, in small 
clusters, early summer. Fruit three-seeded, mawkish in taste. 

HEDGE PLANTS. 

Common Buckthorn, R. catharticus, introduced, has thorny branchlets, 
hardy; a good hedge plant; three to four'seeded fruit. Juice of the berries 
a strong cathartic; barl an emetic quality. Juice of the unripe berries 



INDIGENOUS TREES AND SHRUBS. 31 

with alum gives a yellc .v dye; when this mixture is concentrated it gives 
a sap-green used by painters. Withal a valuable shrub to plant. 

JERSEY TEA. 

Buckthorn. The species known as Red Root, Jersey Tea, Ceanothus 
Americanus, is worthy of a place in our forestry work. It is quite common 
throughout the state, except far northward. A shrub ranging from 
twenty-five to thirty feet high; roots red, mossy, gnarly; a nuisance to the 
plow. Flowers, summer, crowded in a dense slender peduncled (flower 
stalked) cluster. The leaves deciduous, ovate, finely-toothed downy 
beneath, three-ribbed and veiny; sometimes used as a substitute for tea. 
So gnarly rooted, adapted to dry grounds, it can no doubt serve an admirable 
purpose as a pioneer in regenerating wild and barren localities, pre- 
paratory to the planting of larger and more advanced trees. 

ENGLISH BUCKTHORN, Rhamuus catharticus. 

A popular hedge plant of Europe and the eastern states; bears close 
pruning without injury; robust, pretty, white flowers in June; black ber- 
ries, hardy even in very severe localities. Seeds ripen in autumn. 

PRICKLY ASH, Zauthoxylum Americana. 

Common, perfectly hardy; makes an impenetrable hedge. Autumn 
seeds. 

BUFFALO BERRY, SJiepherdixi argentea. 

Give it a proper place and it will grow from ten to fifteen feet high; 
found along the water courses of Dakota and Montana; bears imperfect 
flowers before the leaves appear; leaves are silvery and pretty; difficult to 
secure pistillate plants, hence must have fertilization; fruit red, having 
one quite large seed; acid, makes a good jelly or sauce; hardy, and is used 
for hedges. Grows from seed. 

RUSSIAN MULBERRY. 

The Russian seems to take the lead of the mulberries in Minnesota. 
Useful for shelter and wood. Standing alone, it is handsome. Makes a 
solid hedge. Its fruit has an aromatic odor, sub-acid, sweetish. Thorn- 
shrubs of the Crataegus family, such as the White, with its rigid thorns 
and crimson fruit; tho Black (American) and Hawthorn (English), are well 
fitted for hedges and the forest borders. 

RED AND YELLOW PLUM, Pruuus Americana. 

Select, blossoming in April and May and fruiting in July and August. 
Let them occupy the sunny niches of the woods, protected and protective, 
yielding their delicious plums. 

THE UNDERBRUSH. 

In the planted forest place the dogwood, the native hollies, red bird 
cherries, the choke cherries, the June berries the wild raspberries and 
blackberries, currants, dewberries, sand-cherries, gooseberries, elders and 
wild dwarf roses, alone the borders with the thorns, and grow in there 



32 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

the mint family, the bjxberry, the wintergreen, the genseng and what- 
ever else is safely medicinal and esculent. The mosses will assert their 
rights to a place there. They will grow spontaneous where there is shade 
enough and moisture and decaying wood on whifh they feed. Conditions 
obtaining, introduce all possible varieties of mosses and ferns that are 
adaptable to the situation. The practical idea is to naturalize our forestal 
art for beauty as well as utility. 

VINES AND CLIMBING SHRUBS. 

As vines are constituents of a real and successful forest, some of our 
more conspicuous and hardy are here mentioned. 

American Ivy, Ampilopsis quinquefolia. Native, strong, hardy; beauti- 
ful, bright crimson foliage in autumn. Surpasses all for covering porches, 
unsightly fences and decayed trees. Grown from cuttings, layers and 
seeds. 

Bitter Sweet, Celastrus scandens. Hardy, clean, conspicuous and pretty 
when covered with its orange-colored seed pods. Grown from seed or 
layers. 

Virgin's Bower, Clematis Virginiaiia. Native, healthy and strong, bearing 
a profusion of small, white, fragrant flowers in August. Makes a beautiful 
contrast with the ivy just mentioned. Grown from seed or layers. The 
C. viticella is equally satisfactory, having large blue or purple flowers, 
producing them all summer. 

Moonseed, Menisperum canadense. Slender and pretty, large leaves; 
succeed well in partial shade; grown from seed. 

Wild Grape, Vitis riparia. Coarse but beautiful, covering dead trees or 
any unsightly object. Hardy anywhere; fragrant flowers. Excellent stock 
for grafting on the domesticated grapes. Grown from cuttings or layers. 



1 



How to Manage Forest Seeds, 
Seedlings and Cuttings. 



Most of our prairie farms are tillable. For this reason they specially 
need wind-breaks. Then why not copy nature's art here? The wind-breaks 
could be economically placed in separate groups and clusters and curves, 
leaving wide spaces between them for fields and orchards, thus breaking 
the winds from all directions, and yet leaving the best possible ventilation, 
so that none of the crops will be crowded or shaded. There is such a thing 
as blending the beautiful with the utilitarian, making the farm a perpetual 
satisfaction. 

THE SQUARE STYL.E. 

If farmers will persist in having the square style of forestation, surmising 
that they thus abridge the forest acreage and better arrange their agricul- 
tural grounds, there should be the same studied effort to adapt the species 
of trees to the situation and where they can best perform their functions. 
The hardiest and most flexible should be planted on the outside to cut the 
prevailing winds, and these, on our prairies, are generally from the 
west and south in the seasons of plant growth. It is not wise to leave the 
south open as some do, as our hottest wind-waves beat in from that direc- 
tion, like so many blistering simoons. The denser wind-breaks are, there- 
fore, needed on these two sides, also protection on the north and east, but 
not to the same special extent. 

WINDROWS AND SNOW-DRIFTS. 

On the outside plant two rows of white willows not over one foot apart. 
As it is desirable to prevent snow-drifting on your premises, leave an 
open space next the willows, where it will naturally lodge, of twenty or 
thirty feet. Beginning on the hither side of the snow-lane, plant, four 
feet apart, several rows of ash; then rows of box-elder, cottonwoods, ma- 
ples, elms, hackberries, oaks, buttarnuts, and line the inside of the "decid- 
uous wall" with white spruces, arbor vitaes, pines, and other evergreens, 
not right up under the shade, but thirty or forty feet distant — two, three, 
yes, four rows of them, so placed that the trees in each row will form per- 
fect triangles with each other, thus the better protecting each other. In 
a few years their branches will begin to interlock in solid arches. Such a 
forest will resist any wind and will protect the fields and orchards in the 
leeward safe from all harm. In less even than a decade that farm will 
be worth ten times more than it was at first, and that forest has made it 



34 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

so. What can possibly enhance farm values like an ample supply of fuel 
close at hand, and a living and perpetual shield to the crops and stock and 
inmates of the home ? 

SELECTION OF SEEDS, 

To insure success, the seeds must be of the best quality. Avoid the first 
installment that falls, for insects may have caused unhealthy ripening. 
Seeds from stunted, malformed or dwarfish trees may be morbid in make- 
up; avoid them, also seeds from trees enfeebled by extreme age or other 
debilitating causes. The trees should be middle-aged, and a little sep- 
arated from others where they have the full benefit of the sun and air 
which gives a full head and a healthy condition. 

TIME TO GATHER. 

Seeds should be gathered when the weather is dry, and when they fall 
to the ground as if heavy — in showers at the beating or shaking of the 
trees. 

PKESERVATION OF SEEDS. 

It is difficult to determine x-he exact condition by which all kinds of seeds, 
may be preserved. By experience it has been proved that seeds will not 
germinate if placed in vacuo or in an unbalanced atmosphere, such as hy- 
drogen, nitrogen or carbonic acid. Judging from the duration of seeds 
buried in the earth, and from other circumstances, the essential conditions 
are : 1, uniform temperature; 2, moderate dryness; 3, exclusion of light. 

ART OF DRYING. 

When gathered, the seeds should be immediately spread in thin layers 
in a dry, airy place, raking occasionally until the dampness has evaporat- 
ed. There is such a dijfference in the conditions of species as to tenden- 
cies to sprout, to heat, to rot, to perish by desiccation, or to mould, no one 
set rule seems to be always applicable. The seedsman must be a close 
student of nature's art of preservation, and act according to conditions and 
circumstances. But we have some guides, whibh are herein mentioned, 
safe to follow. When properly dried so as not to heat, put them into sacks 
and keep them from drying-out by mixing with sand, hung up in airy 
shelter. 

BOX-EEDER AND ASH SEEDS. 

As the box-elder and ash are our pioneer trees, special attention is called 
to the management of their seeds, ripening in autumn. They are liable to 
be injured by the drying art, hence the safer way, also, for the sugar 
maple, is to plant them in the late fall, and more seeds will thus sprout. 
If the spring planting is preferred, the better to escape the early frosts, 
soak in a creek or other changed water till well swelled out all ready to 
sprout. The ash requires longer soaking. Sow in moist soil in the cool 
of the day. A yet better way, thus avoiding the soaking process, is to 
spread them out thin, just before winter sets in, on a smooth and well- 



FOREST SEEDS, SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS. 35 

drained spot of ground, and cover with sand, decayed straw or other 
litter, and keep them there frozen and moist. When it is time to sow 
the next spring, see that the seeds are not exposed to the sun's heat. Sow 
them so the plants will be self-shading, and yet thin enough for vigorous 
growing. 

THE NUT SEEDS. 

The nuts of the oaks, walnuts, butternuts, chestnuts, hackberry, bass- 
wood, larch, fir, and the like— all ripening in the fall— should be gath- 
ered soon as ripe. Some may be worm-eaten; test them and other seeds 
in water; the sourift ones sink; or, put some at random on a hot shovel; 
the sound ones turn over and go "tick-tack." In such ways the proportion 
of good and bad seeds may be ascertained. Dry as described. Mix with sand 
and keep in the dry cellar at about thirty degrees above zero. Plant in 
the late fall where you want the trees to stay. Spring planting is safe 
if the seeds are allowed to freeze where they will not dry up. Succor 
the young seedlings. 

PULP SEEDS. 

Use similar methods for seeds of cherries, buffalo berries, cranber- 
ries, and others of like constituency, also of pears and apples. Fall 
planting recommended. For fall planting, a good way is to put the seeds 
at the beginning of winter under inverted sods, or freeze awhile in a 
box of moist dirt, then remove to the cellar, being careful that they do 
not dry out there. In the spring expose to warm suns till they just "bo- 
peep" from their shells; then plant, properly shading while young and 
tender. 

HARD-SHELLS. 

The heavier and larger seeds of all species of flora produce the best 
plants. Such seeds as the juniper, locust, white cpdar, hawthorn, Ken- 
tucky Coffee Tree, etc., are difficult to sprout. They need the freezing 
and thawing of winter in its utmost rigor. For spring planting pour 
boiling water on them, and as it gradually cools, let them remain in it 
about an hour or more, or until some of the seeds have swelled out. These 
"elect" should be immediately planted in moist soil and kept moist for 
sprouting with certainty. Treat the still more refractory to a like dose. 
The red cedar seeds are harder to manage. The alkali of potash seems 
to be the most effectual for ^uch. 

Some seeds, the haw for instance, may be mixed with bran-mash and 
fed to sheep or cattle, and the droppings planted. Being softened by 
digestion they are thus fitted for sprouting ; the same with seeds that 
birds swallow. 

SEEDS THAT DO NOT KEEP WELL. 

Seeds of the poplars, willows, elms, birches, soft maples, etc., lose 
their power of germination soon after ripening in the early summer, and 
should, therefore, be planted at once. It is unprofitable lo try to rftis« 



36 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

cottonwoods on the prairie from the seeds. The proper place is on the 
sandy beach of the lake or river, where they sow themselves. The above- 
named, and all other seeds, in fact, do best on a northern or eastern slope, 
where the soil is moister, and the light and heat less intense. 

PREPARATION OF SOIL. 

Plow deep for all trees — pulverize the soil fine, as for corn. If you plant 
on newly broken or unsubdued soil, failure is certain on the prairie. All 
seeds and plants have their inalienable rights to fitted soil, light, air, water 
and culture. 

DEPTH OF COVERING, EtC. 

Covering too deep retards germination. Comparatively' thin sowing 
gives large, healthy trees. For maximum depths, 1^ to 2}4 inches for 
oaks and chestnuts; ^ to an inch for maples, ash and box elder; 2 inches 
for black locust; 3^ of an inch for alder; 3^ to 1 inch for spruce, Scotch 
pine and larch; % of an inch for Austrian pine; birch and elm as thin as 
possible to insure germination. Fall sowing may be covered more heavily. 
Have the earth cover above seed loose so that air and moisture can 
readily penetrate to aid in dissolving the food materials in the seed. The 
quicker the sprouting, the lesc danger to the seeds. Guard against hot air 
and strong light. Keep the water supply at the roots, and the degree of 
light and heat at the top properly balanced. Avoid too much water for 
the plantlets; most plants are then liable to rot. 

SPRING OR FALL PLANTING. 

If the ground is well supplied with moisture for the winter, it is quite 
safe to plant seedlings in October, such as the box elder and ash. If the 
fall season is dry, do not plant a tree till spring. Indeed, spring planting 
should be the rule. 

HEELING-IN. 

Trees for spring planting had better be removed from their seed-beds in the 
fall. They are then in their best condition, and it is wise to keep them 
so, and not subject the young candidates to needless wintry perils. Select 
a well-drained spot; dig a trench of suitable length and depth correspond- 
ing to size of your trees. Throw the dirt up like a roof. Thin out the 
plants side by side in the trench, their stalks lying impact on the slant. 
Sprinkle the dirt among the roots fine; shovel on enough for another 
ground-roof and another tier, and so on till all are buried. Press the earth 
down gently. After the ground is well frozen, cover the tips with some 
kind of litter. By spring the cuts and broken parts of the roots have 
started to heal over, and you have gained so much time. Frozen plants 
should be placed in a dark cellar, and the frost allowed to come out slowly. 

GENERAL DIRECTIONS FOR PLANTING. 

Trees one or two years old are more reliable for the field than older 
and larger ones, and with proper management will soon outstrip the latter 
in size and quality. Your soil must be all ready before you can unbury a 



FOREST SEEDS SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS. 37 

single tree, and all your tools in proper order. Do not venture to plant 
while the ground is so wet as to make a mortar, or the water collects in the 
hole. If you do, the soil in contact with the roots tends to become 
hard in drying, to the great injury of the growth. 

Soon as trees are taken up or received from the nursery, with a sharp 
knife prune off all badly bruised roots, but cut as little as possible to bring 
crown and root in proportion. Puddle the roots in equal parts of cow dung, 
clay and water. Be careful not to expose the roots of trees to the wind 
and sun. More failures in tree planting arise from carelessness in this 
particular than from any other cause. To prevent this, carry the trees to 
the field to be planted in bundles covered with mats; lay them down and 
cover the roots with wet loam, and only remove them from the bundle as 
they are actually required for planting. In planting, the roots should be 
carefully spread out and the soil worked among them. Make the roots 
trend downward into the damp soil. When the roots are covered, press the 
earth firmly about the plant with the foot. Insert the plant some deeper 
than it stood before being transplanted. Select, if possible, for tree plant- 
ing a cloudy or a rainy day. It is better to plant after the middle of the 
day than before it. Protect the young plantation from cattle and other 
browsing animals. 

PLANTING LARGER TREES. 

In planting trees from three to six feet, select such as are symmetrical, 
free from insect pests, having broad crowns and dense foliage. It is the 
little fibers that sustain the life of the tree. See that there are plenty of 
them, compactly grown, and not impaired in bark or torn at the ends or 
dried up. Cover them with moist soil or moss or bags, and retain on 
them as much of the original soil as possible. Pruning for beauty and 
health should be done a year before transplanting, or may be done a year 
after. If you select cottonwoods, or any of the poplar family, see that 
they are not planted near the well or spring, for then they will surely clog 
them with their roots and taint the water. The method of planting, and 
after care, are thus summarized by Prof. B. F. Fernow, <ihief of the For- 
estry Division : 

"Holes are best made before the trees are brought to the ground. They 
should be some deeper than the depth of the root system, but twice as 
large around as seems necessary, to facilitate penetration of rains and de- 
velopment of rootlets through the loosened soil. Place the top soil, which 
is better (being richer in easily assimilated plant food) to one side, the 
raw soil from the bottom to the other side; in filling back bring the richer 
soil to the bottom, li it be practicable, improve a heavy, loamy soil by 
adding to and mixing with it looser sandy soil, or a loose poor soil by 
enriching it with loam or compost. Keep all stones out of the bottom; 
they may be used above the roots, or better, on the surface. Providing 
proper drainage Is the best means of improving ground for tree planting. 
Use no manure except as a top dressing. 

" The practice of using water while planting can hardly be said to be a 
good one, unless the water is very carefully applied with a 'hose' after 



38 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

the soil is well filled in and packed around the fibrous roots. Water, after 
the transplanting (and perhaps before the last shovels of earth are filled 
in), especially if the soil was dry, is useful and should be applied during 
the hot season, choosing the late afternoon or evening for applying it. Any 
mulch of waste material, straw, or better, wood shavings or chips, saw- 
dust, or even stones simply placed around the foot of the tree, is of excel- 
lent service in checking evaporation. 

" To prevent the trees from being swayed by the wind, if of large size, 
they should be staked firmly; a loose post is worse than none. The tying 
should be so done as not to cut or injure the tree; a tree box Insures more 
safety against accidents. With the development of the crown it becomes 
necessary to trim it, so as to carry the top above reach. Trees are not 
benefited by being used as hitching posts, or climbing poles, or other 
frolic." 

PLANTING ALONG RAILROAD CUTS AND HIGHWAYS. 

Nothing is more important for the traveling public tljan shelter belts 
along the deep cuts of railroads in open countries liable to snow-drifts. 
In such localities the trees should line both sides of the road. The soil 
must first be prepared as in vo field. The trees — young selections from the 
nursery— planted and cultivated as herein directed. Put there rows of 
cottonwoods and willows; also, white and red cedars; white spruce and 
Scotch pine. Road improvement means lining them with trees. 

PLANTIKG ON ROCKY AND STEEP PLACES. 

Minnesota has a vast area of rocky bluffs along the rivers and lakes, 
many of them so barren as to be almost valueless, even for pasturage. All 
such should be, and can be clothed with forests. . Harder places than these 
have thus been regenerated in the old world. It does seem that our legisla- 
ture could no better serve the public welfare than to encourage their foresta- 
tion by special bounties to the proprietors. If so steep they cannot be 
plowed, dig under the sides of the stones where the moisture generally 
gathers and stays, or, if this is not feasible, do as recommended by Prof. 
F. B. Hough, Elements of Forestry, page 57; dig "horizontal terraces or 
notches at convenient intervals, securing their outer edges with brush held 
in place with pegs. In a year or two these notches will have probably 
become filled up by the crumbling away of the rock above, and in the soil 
thus formed trees may be planted with a prospect of success." Begin with 
our native white and green ashes, and bur-oaks (planting the acorns) and 
shade the candidates with our hardiest shrubs as hereafter mentioned, not 
forgetting how efficient in this respect is our native prairie rose, whose 
tap-root will find moisture if it has to go down five or six feet to reach it. 

PLANTING ON SOD LAND. 

Extremely difficult to succeed with any tree planted in sod land. The 
binding grass even beyond the range of the roots affects them very un- 
healthfully. Better subdue the sods by plowing or spading. If you must 
venture without such preparation, then dig holes large around as a cart- 



FOREST SEEDS, SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS. 39 

wheel, for trees ranging from four to six feet, and at least eighteen inches 
deep, and fill in. Mulcli from six to eight inches deep, radiating out at 
least one foot beyond the circumference dug. There will be times in the 
dry and late summer when all the trees must have attention, the same as in 
the field. They begin to droop. What's the matter ? Do they thirst for 
water? Probably. But more likely the roots are so bound, they and the 
leaves cannot breathe. They want air-circulation as well as water in the 
ground. Throw back the mulch. Stir up the soil superficially and finely; 
avoid harming a single root; give them enough water to drink to their fill; 
throw back the mulch and they revive. Just before winter sets in, water 
profusely to help them through the wintry drouth. 

HEDGES. 

As inquiry is constantly increasing as to what methods are best for rais- 
ing hedges, the following from the pen of Prof. W. W.'Pendergast, super- 
intendent of public instruction, exactly answers all such letters. For a 
hedge, he recommends the buckthorn. His treatment of the seed can be 
successfully applied to the bufifalo berry and other seeds for hedges : 

"Soon as the frost is out of the ground in the spring to the depth of 
three or four inches, mix a pound of buckthorn seed with about two quarts 
of finely pulverized sandy soil, and having rubbed it well with the hands in 
a pail of water to separate the three seeds which grow in each pocket, 
place the mixture in a box six inches square and six inches deep, in the 
bottom of which several holes have been previously bored for drainage, 
and cover the whole with half an inch of fine soil. Sink the box in loose 
soil in some sunny spot, and occasionally sprinkle with soft water slightly 
warmed. Be careful not to water too frequently or too abundantly, as in 
such case the seed will rot. If the season be rainy, it will not need water- 
ing at all. The ground should be kept somewhat moist, but not wet. 
About the first of May begin to examine the seed to see if it has sprouted. 
When the little white roots begin to protrude from the seeds, make a garden 
bed about a rod square and sow the seeds half an inch deep, making four- 
teen rows, and sowing about four hundred seeds to a row. The plants 
should grow two years in the bed before being set in the hedge-row. Cut 
back to half their length and set in parallel rows one foot apart, and plant 
one foot apart in the row, breaking joints so that each shall be opposite the 
midway point between the nearest two in the other row. Prune severely 
for the first few years, so as to make the hedge thicken up well at the bot- 
tom. A pound of seed should make 180 rods of hedge." 

SEASON FOR CUTTING WOOD. 

If it be desirable to preserve the continuity and density of the planta- 
tion for future profits, and it is deemed necessary to thin out for fuel or 
other purposes, then cut, say when ten or twelve years old, such trees as 
the oaks, ashes, box elders, poplars, including cottonwoods, willows, lind- 
ens, etc., on a level with the ground, not when cbe sap starts, but just 
before it starts. Do not wound or tear off the bark. Use an adze after- 
wards and leave the stumps convex. Cut away such sprouts as are not 



40 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

wanted to grow. If, however, you are not in the sprouting business, but 
want some durable posts, railroad ties and the like, cut in the winter or 
dormant season, as you would mature trees for timber. Hoop-poles should 
never be cut when the bark will peel. 

INSECT DEPREDATION. 

All things have their parasites. Forest trees are no exception. Soon 
after the box elders and ashes, and other favorites are leafing out, millions 
of winged and crawling imps may be preying on their leaves, stems and 
roots. The writer has successfully used Paris green, thinly diluted with 
water and sprinkled on the plants. 

But one of the most useful of the insecticides, destructive to plant par- 
asites, is the kerosine emulsion: Dissolve one-half pound of hard soap 
(best whale soap) in four pints of water by boiling. When the soap is all 
dissolved, remove from the fire and add eight pints of kerosine, and agitate 
the whole briskly until a permanent mixture is obtained. This is best 
done by using a force pump and pumping the mixture with force back into 
the vessel that contains it. The emulsion may be diluted to the desired 
strength and used at once, or may be used from when needed. The 
strength ordinarily used is prepared by diluting one part of the emulsion 
in ten or twelve parts of water, which makes the kerosine one-twentieth 
part of the whole. 

PROPAGATING FROM CUTTINGS. 

During wet seasons, cottonwoods, willows, poplars, etc., can be raised 
from their cuttings. They should be selected from well ripened and 
smooth-barked wood, cut with a sharp knife from eight to ten inches long, 
and not over half an inch in diameter. Never cut them when frozen. If 
cut in autumn or during warm days in winter, heel them in, or pack in 
damp straw or sawdust until wanted. If, just before planting, they are 
any way shrunk, soak them in water until plump again. A good time to 
cut and plant immediately is when the spring buds begin to swell. Sink 
into the soil the entire length on a slant, and press the earth close, es- 
pecially at the base of the cutting. 

SAFEST WAY. 

Wm. Somerville, of the Farmers' Institute, recommends cutting notches 
in the bark of cottonwood, poplar or willow poles and laying them down in 
furrows and plowing them under. They will sprout up at the notches, and 
are less endangered by the dry weather. This is practical when the object 
is to retain the trees permanently where the poles are planted. But for 
healthfulness and durability, a tree from a well managed seedling is ahead 
of the one from a cutting, for the seedling has more tendency to tap-root 
itself, reaching down to the moisture and taking stronger hold. But the 
Cottonwood's a second-class tree for the prairie at present. Col. John H. 
Stevens says: " It will not live in soil strongly impregnated with alkali, 
but when this element is eliminated by culture long enough, we shall have 
better luck with this tree. " 



FOREST SEEDS, SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS 41 

PROTECTING TENDER SEEDLINGS. 

The oaks, hard maples, walnuts, basswoods, and other choice sorts need 
protection from hot and cold winds. Plant young box elders on both sides 
of the rows, and when they are strong enough to take care of themselves, 
remove the supports. 

SCREENS FOR THE TRUNKS. 

Use any white but not tarred paper. Wire-screens are a reliable safe- 
guard against the depredation of mice and rabbits, but the most satis- 
factory disposal of these rascals is their extermination. 

HOW TO MANAGE TAP-ROOTERS. 

Spread the nuts thickly over a brick pavement or layer of broken stone; 
cover with rich soil and keep moist. Instead of tap-fOots, the plants are 
compelled to send out an abundance of laterals, and such can be safely 
transplanted. 

TRANSPLANTING LARGE TREES. 

Dig circular trenches around the trees you wish to transplant, say three 
or more feet from the trunks, and, when the ground is solidly frozen, 
draw them down with the team, thus retaining the roots imbedded in the 
dirt. Haul to the lawn, and plant in the great holes dug the fall before, 
staying the trees with long timbers, or better with wires. This feat being 
performed in the winter when the sap is stagnant, the roots are protected 
from damage, and in the spring when the old elms wake up, they will 
hardly notice the change, except from the new associations they have 
formed. 

CULTIVATION. 

It will not harm the young seedlings in the least, but help them greatly, 
when the weeds peep up, and before the leaves have unfolded, if you drag 
the harrow over. This saves a great amount of time and labor. Soon 
after this process, the soil must be stirred by the cultivator frequently and 
more and more shallow as the season wanes. By the middle of July hold 
up. The cells of thfe plants have then about reached their full develop- 
ment. They must now have time to ripen for the winter's ordeal. If you 
cultivate later you dangerously prolong the ripening process, thus quick- 
ening the circulation and weakening the plants. Let the weeds then grow; 
they are a splendid protection, trapping, too, the snowy mantles. Living, 
healthy plants next spring — success ! 

HOW TO MANAGE OUR DRY SOILS. 

As to soil, there is no country on the continent better adapted to success- 
ful tree culture and all sorts of plant culture, than the prairie. The soil 
possesses the necessary ingredients. It is dark colored, and, therefore, 
heat-drawing from the sun. It generally has under the surface soil a clay 
sub-soil that holds the subterranean water from running away. It exists 
in sufficient quantity in depth for all our purposes. 



42 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

THE DRAW-BACK. 

A lack of water is the great draw-back with us. We have not enough 
rainfall to supply our full needs. We are therefore driven to the necessity 
of economizing What moisture we have with the most vigorous energy. 
Plowing up the soil breaks its sodded crust, allowing water to filtrate down- 
ward to the clay beds and chambers, held there in reserve for use. What 
a beneficent provision this in the divine economy of nature! 

OUR PRIVILEGED DUTY. 

Rains are fortuitous; we are not yet able to control them. To depend 
exclusively upon their descent makes our agriculture as uncertain as the 
winds that so mercilessly beat upon our crops. The business in hand is to 
economize what we have, to control the water content of the soil. Gen- 
erally in the spring the soil is well saturated with moisture. 

* 

SOIL-TAPPING. 

Spring plowing taps the soil, verily bleeds it to a dry death. Fall plowing 
is not attended with much evaporation. The winter snows and winds pack 
it down to the right condition for plant growth. It must be kept thus 
packed through the entire growing season. If we keep gouging into it 
with the shovels of the cultivator, we not only neutralize largely the capil- 
lary action, but we open innumerable and dangerous ducts into it, pro- 
ducing rapid evaporation, and soon all our water reserve is lost and our 
plants die. The trouble is, we stab the sub-soil; we cultivate where the 
tecfrh of the cultivator have no business to be. The essential work to do 
is to expose the least possible amount of soil to the action of the sun and 
winds. 

SOIL- AERATION. 

But the soil must be stirred just enough to break up the surface crust, 
formed by deposit of saline particles brought up by capillary action 
and virtually baked in the heat-ovens of the sun. The thing to do is 
simply to harrow up this crust and transform it into a fine "dust blanket," 
flexible enough to let in the air close enough to husband the moisture just 
under it. An intelligent prairie farmer sensibly says in the Annual of 
Farmers' Institute, vol. 5, page 96 : 

" It is essential that the air be admitted within the soil to bring with its 
coming, oxygen and nitrogen, and take in its going the carbon dioxide lib- 
erated in the soil. This coming and going of the air in the soil may be 
called soil-breathing. The germinating seeds, growing roots and germs of 
ferment, germs of nitric acid and free nitrogen fixing germs, all breathe 
the air, all are essential to soil fertility, and to exclude air would surely 
cause a poverty of crops." 

It is plain, then, that cultivation must be thin and frequent during the 
dry season of plant growing. 

THE EVERGREENS. 

Among the evergreens suited for our climate are our native white spruce, 
red and white cedar, white and red pine, Norway spruce, bull pine. Those 



FOREST SEEDS, SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS. 43 

from the wild forest are not as well rooted nor so hardy as from the nur- 
sery; but with care in plucking up, packing and planting, never exposing 
the roots to the sun, they can be made to live and do well. Best ever- 
greens have been transplanted two or three times. The smaller sizes, from 
three to four years old, are the more reliable. They should be planted on 
the lawn, here and there one and sometimes in groups, and around the 
stock yard, the barn and other out-buildings, hiding deformities. There is 
no better wind-break for the orchard or garden than evergreens. 

PL, A5} TING EVERGREENS. 

t 

Keep the roots moist; never expose them a moment to the sun or wind. 
Drying coagulates the juices and stops the circulation. "For better pro- 
tection," says the Jewell Nursery Company, "mud the roots and put In the 
ground before ill dries on. Such treatment is better than pouring water 
into the hole." Don't put in the tree as you would a post. Make the hole 
large and deep and fill in the best loose soil. Spread the roots out natural. 
Do it quickly. Put the plant down an inch, at least, deeper than it grew 
in the nursery. Sprinkle the dirt in fine; press it around the roots close; 
shovel in and press down, and so on till the precious thing is so well 
planted you cannot pull it up. Leave a film of unpressed dirt on the sur- 
face; have the ground dip toward the tree to catch the rain. Mulch on 
the surface and out over and beyond where the roots are. 

KILLED BY WATERING. 

Trees do not live on water alone, but mainly on the nutrition of the soil, 
the water assisting in the process of preparing the food they need by con- 
tributing its share of the oxygen. Too much water gormandizes, neutral- 
izes the chemical action, or vegetable digestion, so to speak. Very often 
cold water, direct from the well, is sprinkled on the plants, which tends to 
chill them to death, and these little dribblets seldom reaching the roots, 
form a hard cryst on the surface soil, excluding air circulation, and, of 
course, the plants die. Mulching well economizes the ground moisture 
and assists in developing ammonial properties, so essential to plant life. 
My idea is, that when all the ground is "dry as chips," best to water 
among the roots with sunned water, and "let them alone." 

RAISING EVERGREENS FROM SEEDS. 

Procure the northern grown. The one year old are surest to sprout. 
They are found at the base of the scaly shells to the cones in which they 
develop. Sometimes they drop out before the cones fall from the parent 
tree. Then again they may remain in their cozy homes long after the 
cones have fallen. Even as late as June, the seed in this condition can be 
found. For surer harvest better gather the cones just before the seeds are 
ripe, say from the last of October till the middle of November, and grad- 
ually dry them. Generally the shells will open by this process. When 
they seem to be refractory, subject them to artificial heat, and the seeds 
are sure to fall out. Keep in a cool, dry place, excluding the light, and 
plant in the spring in moist soil. 



44 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

As a rule, it does not pay to raise evergreens from the seed; but there is 
a pleasure in success and profit with the pleasure. Almost any kind of 
mould will do, but sand-leaf mould is preferable. Locate the bed where 
mice and squirrels are not masters of the situation. Sow broadcast; sift 
the covering on about an inch deep for the larger sort, such as the pines 
and Norway spruce. Raise up side frame about six feet for air circulation. 
Have portable latticed covers to shade or remove, as needed. Can be 
made of lath or brush. Protect against bright suns both summer and 
winter. Remove the shades after ordinary rains, and put back when the 
bed is well dried off. A like treatment is necessary for evergreens trans- 
planted from the forest. In warm and moist weather the seedlings are 
apt to dampen, a peril that can generally be prevented by covering the bed 
with a coating of sand. 

THIN:5iriNG THE FOREST. 

Trees will thin themselves in due time. But, understanding nature's 
laws, we can apply them, if wise enough, as aids, and sooner accomplish 
the ends sought. With scarcely an exception, the Owners of our native 
woodlands cut and slash indiscriminately, without a thought as to effects. 
In cutting trees for fuel or lumber, the reckless rule is, cut so as to get the 
most immediate profit. Even if fires do not follow the ax, the wide gaps 
made, open the way for the sudden ingress of scorching suns and sweep- 
ing winds, drying up and tearing to pieces the remnant. That forest is 
the same as ruined. Sad to relate, such is the common condition of the 
old woods of Minnesota. Trees growing compactly side by side are com- 
paratively tender, unfitted for sudden exposure that breaks the balance of 
mutual support. If the object be to preserve a forest, and yet draw from 
it supply for home or market, do not cut out over a quarter, or at most, a 
third of the trees the first year; and this thinning must be judicious, cut- 
ting here and there a tree, always with a view to improvement. Then wait 
two or three years before thinning much more. The idea is to give more 
room for root-taking and limb-branching, maintaining the continuity of 
the forest arch or roof, the trees standing up symmetrically to grand heights 
and dense foliage. 

ART OF PRUNIiSTG. 

Avoid everything set or stiffly artificial. Trees should be pruned to 
healthy conditions, and beauty of form will naturally ensue. Ignorant 
pruning is one of the unpardonable foes to a tree. Very frequently — in- 
deed the rule of thoughtless intermeddlers with nature's beautiful art of 
self-preservation — the branches are sawed off an inch or more from the 
tree-trunk. It is impossible for nature to heal such wounds. Always 
prune close to the bark. The roots of a tree are proportioned to the 
branches. If then you saw off large live branches which nature cannot 
heal over, the roots at once begin to die, and the rotting roots convey rot- 
tenness to the trunk. The bungling pruner virtually stabs the tree to the 
heart, for the stumps he leaves on soon rot, and convey the rotting ten- 
dency downward as the rotting roots do upward. A severely pruned, or a 



FOREST SEEDS, SEEDLINGS AND CUTTINGS. 45 

badly pruned tree soon becomes hollow, and seldom lasts many years. 
Prune when the trees are young and "be harmless as a dove." 

SEASON FOR PRUNING. 

All our foresters and horticulturists agree with J. S. Harris, that from 
June 25th to July 10th, is emphatically the season for summer pruning 
fruit and ornamental trees. The secret of good pruning is : Never permit 
a useless limb to grow. The main part of the work consists in rubbing off 
the sprouts that will make superfluous branches, and pinching in such as 
are making excessive growth in the wrong direction, and will tend to 
throw the tree out of symmetry. If necessary, branches less than a half 
inch in diameter may be removed and the healing process will begin at 
once, but care must be taken not to remove too much foliage at one time, 
for it will injure the vitality of the tree. 

TREES GNAWED BY HORSES. 

" The gnawing of the bark by horses," says Thomas Meehan, ''shortens 
a tree's life considerably. If the bark is removed half around the tree, only 
one-half the necessary amount of moisture and food that the tree requires 
can be drawn. In a very dry time such trees suffer seriously, and either 
die at once or dwindle gradually away." 

TREATMENT OF TREE WOUNDS. 

Discreet surgery is as necessary for our trees as for our teeth. Prof. C. 
A. Sargent, of the Bussey Institution, translating from the French, gives 
us practical hints. Cut away cleanly all loosened or injured bark. Cut 
smooth a regular outline, especially on the lower side. Leave no dead 
pieces for insects to hide under. Then apply a coating of coal-tar. 

CAVITIES IN THE TRUNK. 

Cut the edges of the cavity smooth and even; remove all decomposed 
matter; apply the coal tar to the surface of the cavity; plug the mouth 
with a piece of well-seasoned oak, securely driven in; smooth down the end 
of the plug; cover the whole with coal-tar, and nail on a piece of zinc or 
other metal„ in such a way the growth of the new wood will in time com- 
pletely cover it. ''Coal-tar has remarkable preservative properties, and may 
be used with equal advantage on living and dead wood. A single applica- 
tion, without penetrating deeper than ordinary paint, forms an impervious 
coating to the wood cells, which would, without such covering, under ex- 
ternal influences, soon become channels of decay. This simple application 
then produces a sort of instantaneous cauterization, and preserves from 
decay wounds caused either in pruning or by accident. The odor of coal- 
tar drives away insects, or prevents them, by complete adherence to the 
wood from injuring it." 

COPYING nature's METHOD. 

Experiments have been tried and with considerable success to raise 
forest trees by sowing broadcast the seeds of the box elder, ash, oak, birch. 



46 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

sugar maple, hackberry, etc., as is done in some parts of Europe where 
conditions warrant. This method has promise where the soil is moist. 
The crop the year of the seeding must be a clean one, say of corn or pota- 
toes, and all the weeds and grass absolutely subdued. The plowing must 
be deep; well to use a. sub-soil plow, and harrow the land till as mellow as 
an ash heap. Then mix the seeds together promiscuously, sow broadcast, 
putting on a liberal quantity, and harrow them in. Next spring they will 
come up thick, but will thin themselves out on the principle of the 
"fittest." The growth will be comparatively slow, but healthful if the 
weeds are hoed down during the growing season. In due time you will 
have one of the best and most beautiful forests on the open prairie. This 
is the cheapest way by far. Try it. 

GRAFTING — HQ-VV TO DO IT. 

Grafting to improve the stock of trees is of late commanding the special 
attention of the friends of forestry. The following rules are applicable to 
fruit, as well as timber trees : 

" The kind of grafting most likely to be practiced on the farm is that 
known as^cleft-grafting. The process is a simple one. Saw off the limb 
to be grafted where it is an inch or less in diameter; trim the edges of 
the 'stub,' smooth and split it with a large knife or a cleaver made for the 
purpose. The cleft should not be more than four inches deep at the 
_most. A wedge is now inserted in the centre of the cleft and a cion is set 
on each side of the cleft. The cions are made of twigs of last year's 
growth. They should be cut before the trees show any signs of starting in 
the spring. When the cion is prepared ready for setting, it should contain 
about three buds. The lower end is cut wedge-shaped by slicing off each 
side of the cion. On one side of this wedge-shaped portion, midway be- 
tween its top and bottom, should be left one of the buds. When the cion 
is set, this bud will be deep down in the side of the cleft in the stub, and 
will be covered with wax; but, being nearer the source of nourishment, it 
will be most apt of any buds to grow, and it will readily push through the 
wax. The cion is set into the cleft by exercising great care that the 
inner surface of the bark on the cion exactly matches with the inner bark 
on the stub. A line between the bark and wood may be observed. This 
line on the cion, in other words, should match the line on the stub. Wax 
the whole over carefully and thoroughly. Do not leave any crack ex- 
posed. Grafting wax is made as follows : Melt together resin, beeswax 
and tallow in equal parts and spread on cotton cloth. Tear into strips 
and wrap around graft." 



ENTOMOLOQIC. 



BARK INSECTS. 

By Pkof. Otto Lugger, State Entomologist. 

It has taken a long time before the American nation has realized that 
it is not only very important to protect such trees as are still found in our 
more or less ruined forests, but that it is also equally necessary to plant 
trees to re-forest the more denuded portions of our country. The most 
strongly expressed objection to engage in planting and fostering forests 
has been a question of dollars and cents. It was and is claimed, and 
not without reason, that it requires too many years to grow trees of a 
sufficient large size to be converted into lumber, and that the duration of 
a human life was not long enough to enable those planting forest trees 
to harvest the crop or to realize on the investment. Such has been the 
opinion of the generations before us, and as they simply cut down trees 
but did not plant any, or take the proper care of those planted by nature, 
they left the present generation no inheritance. In fact, the last gen- 
erations have done what we are doing now: living simply for the present, 
not caring for the future. Our case is like that of King Louis XV., who 
said: '^Apres mot le deluge,'' after me the deluge. But this period in a spend- 
thrift's life has to come to an end, and whether we like it or not, this 
generation has to make good what former ones have neglected, or have 
blindly destroyed. But this is not the space to discuss this matter; it 
has been discussed again and again in these pages. "To grow a forest, 
it is simply necessary to plant a large number of trees in a more or less 
regular manner;" this seems to be the idea most persons have of producing 
a Forest. But this is by no means the correct one. It is not only necessary 
to plant trees, but it is equally important to protect them against their 
numerous foes, both animal and vegetable, and also to take proper care of 
the trees that already form forests. Of course, it is not even possible to 
mention the names of the mammals, birds, insects and other animals that 
are more or less intimately connected with a forest, both as friends and as 
enemies. But among the most important enemies of our trees, we have a 
large number of insects that belong to the order of beetles, and which are 
usually called bark-beetles. This name does not, however, indicate that 
they simply live in the bark of trees, or that other insects may not occur 
there. A glance at the illustration will give a good idea of the insects and 
their' work, sufficiently, at least, to make U unnecessary to give a long, 
technical description of them. 



48 



TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



Bark-beetles are entirely dependent upon vegetable food, and spend 
almost the whole period of their existence inside a plant. The only time 
that they are found outside of their home lasts but a few hours, and these 
moments they utilize for their love affairs, and to select a home for their 
offspring. With few exceptions, all bark-beetles occur in the wood of 
trees and shrubs, and but a very few species are found in parts of smaller 




Work of different kinds of Bark-beetles. In the figure at the right are seen the 
primary and secondary tunnels, witli the larvae in them. 

plants. None of them eat leaves and flowers. Most bark-beetles hibernate 
in their perfect stage in the galleries made when larvee, and a few in the 
pupal stage. Early in spring, or as soon as it is fairly warm, these beetles 
awake from their torpid condition, and leaving the tree soon afterwards, 
swarm outside their old home. As we have a large number of species of 
these destructive insects, there is naturally a considerable difference in the 
time of their swarming. Their flight is heavy and not very rapid. During 
this time they have to search for proper places upon suitable trees in 
which to deposit their eggs, which takes place soon after copulation. The 
female beetle gnaws a hole into the chosen tree; after reaching a certain 
depth, it usually turns at a right angle, and continuing makes a straight 



ENTOMOLOGIC. ^ 49 

burrow. As this burrow or tunnel becomes longer, eggs are deposited In 
it at more or less regular intervals, though in some cases all are deposited 
in one or more little heaps. The larvae or worms hatching from these eggs 
gnaw a burrow away from the one made by their mother, and thus fre- 
quently form a very regular system of tunnels, as may be seen in the illus- 
tration. Each species has its own method of work, so that an expert can 
readily judge from a tunnel the species that made it. These larval tunnels 
become larger and larger with the growing larvas until the full-grown 
larvai cease their labors at the end of the tunnels. They now change to 
pupjB, and later to beetles, which, after hardening their outer sidns, 
reach the light by a straight burrow leading to. the surface of the trunk. 
We have a large number of species of bark-beetles which vary consid- 
erably in the method of leaving the burrow in which they grew, in the 
method of swarming, in the manner they search for new homes for their 
offspring, in the formation of the new tunnel, in the way they deposit 
eggs, in°the time required to grow, in the number of annual generations, 
and in many other ways not necessary to mention here. Some species of 
bark-beetles find their food only in the bark, others between the bark 
and ihe wood, and still others in the solid wood itself. Of course, this 
difference causes differences in other habits, but chiefly in the arrange- 
ments of the holes through which they reach the surface. As no bark- 
beetle will fly during a cold and rainy day, nor in cloudy weather, but 
only during the time that the sun shines brightly, the irregularity of their 
appearance outside the tree is readily accounted for. In selecting the 
proper tree for the reception of its eggs, the female beetle is very care- 
ful. Each species will investigate with great care a tree before it is 
selected. Beetles that breed in pine trees will not fly to oaks, and such 
as live in maple will not settle upon linden. Some will select the roots, 
others the trunk, and still others only the branches or smaller twigs. 
This constancy in selecting the exact kind of tree and exact spot upon it 
is explained by the difference in the jaws and other organs of the insects, 
which would make It very difficult to gnaw or burrow in other trees. 
But they select with such great care, not only the kind of trees, but also 
their conditions. Trees that are dead are never selected, as they would 
not be able to furnish the required fluid food. Perfectly healthy trees 
are also discarded, because the larvae would be drowned by too much 
sap Such species of bark-beetles as are hairy, can live in trees like 
pines, notwithstanding their sticky sap, which would smother beetles 
with a smooth skin. Trees that are injured by heavy winds, by careless 
felling of neighboring trees, by the scorching of fire, or have become dis- 
eased by other accidents form the best homes for bark-beetles and are the 
ones that are always selected. If, however, such diseased or injured trees 
should not be found, healthy trees have to be utilized by these insects. 

Bark-beetles are strongly influenced by climatic conditions, by cold, rain,, 
or absence of sunshine. To escape such unfavorable conditions the beetles 
make as soon as possible a burrow in the chosen tree, so that they have a 
retreat in bad weather. In these retreats they can also escape their 
numerous enemies among birds and carnivorous insects. In trees with a 



50 • TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

rough bark the cracks are selected and thence the beetle enters the bark. 
To make a hole large and deep enough to hide, the beetle requires from 
two to three hours. All such holes are perfectly round, and their different 
sizes indicate the sizes of the beetles that made them. 

Species that live in solid wood lead a life different from that of those 
living in the bark. In the former case the mother makes all ramifications 
of a burrow, and then deposits many eggs together. In this case the larvae 
eat nothing but the sap that enters their tunnels. In the latter case the 
larvae themselves have to make the secondary burrows, each living singly 
in one. Of course, the primary tunnel is made by the mother. Dead trees 
can not furnish food for either of these larvae, as they are without fluid 
sap. If a tree should become too dry before the larvae mature all have to 
perish for lack of food; if it should simply become very dry the length of 
the larval existence will be greatly lengthened so as to give them time to 
find all the food required to reach their full size. 

Most species of bark-beetles require about eight weeks to undergo all 
their transformations from the egg to the adult insect, and consequently a 
number of generations can be produced in a single year under favorable 
conditions. It is of great practical importance to know the number of 
generations, and the exact time in which the beetles swarm, since upon 
this knowledge must rest the methods to combat them successfully. This 
important knowledge is still lacking in the great majority of cases, and 
before it is acquired all proposed remedies will be more or less unsuccessful. 
Bad weather, rain and snow, except during the time of swarming, have but 
little influence upon these noxious beetles, as they are so well hidden and 
protected inside their solid home in a tree throughout almost their entire 
period of existence. This explains why insects of this kind can exist in 
such large numbers as far north as trees grow, and in the mountains 
almost to the snow line. 

No other family of beetles is so destructive to trees as the one composed 
of bark-beetles, and consequently they are feared whenever forests are 
taken care of or where new ones are planted. 

As far as remedies are concerned, only a few practical ones can be men- 
tioned. Since "an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure," we 
have to remove all wood from the forests that has been cut a short time 
before the swarming period of such beetles. This is very important. A 
second remedy, and one that has to be carried out at the same time as the 
first one, is to prepare some trees as traps for the insects flying about to 
deposit their eggs. This will prevent them from depositing their eggs upon 
more valuable trees. Removal of freshly cut trees from the forests without 
preparing traps is worse than useless, as it is rather an invitation for the 
insects to increase upon good timber trees. Since we know that bark- 
beetles prefer recently injured trees, we have to prepare a number of such 
trees as traps. In the bark of such trap-trees the majority of the flying 
females will depo^^*^ their eggs. By removing the bark of such trap-trees 
after five or six wetrks, and by burning the bark, an immense number of 
the immature bark-beetles will be destroyed. By preparing a number of 



ENTOMOLOGIC. 51 

such traps at intervals of a few weeks, and by burning their bark,- we can 
greatly lessen the danger. With care, bark-beetles can be kept in 
check. 

OTHER INJURIOUS INSECTS. 

Their name is "legion" and their depredations beyond control. Beetles, 
moths, caterpillars, vegetable lice, don't they multiply? Wilson, the 
ornithologist, pertinently asks: "Would it be believed that an insect no 
larger than a grain of rice, should silently and in one season destroy some 
two thousand acres of pine trees, many of them from two to three feet in 
diameter and a hundred and fifty feet high?" 

Fight them we must. How? With poisons; and thereby we endanger 
the existence of our 



• FRIENDLY INSECTS. 

The wild honey bees that store their food in the hollows of the old trees 
are the fertilizers of the forest flowers. By their instrumentality the 
forest is perpetuated and improved. How do men reward them for this 
providential beneficence? In the dead of the winter they rob them of all 
their honey and kill them. The wood-wasps are also pollen carriers. As 
they store no honey to rob, men send shot through their nests or burn 
them up. The demons of ignorance and rapacity are at work by ax and fire 
and bee-killing, and the forest recedes and rots and dies. But for the 
friendly Insects we would have precious few trees or crops of any kind. 

OUR INSECTIVOROUS BIRDS. 

Frank H. Palmer, in "Agriculture of Massachusetts," aptly says: "If 
left to herself, nature establishes a wholesome equilibrium between the 
feathered and insect tribes. She produces no more insects than can be 
kept in check by the birds. But man, by his artificial habits, disturbs the 
proper balance between these tribes. By cutting down the woods, by 
disturbing the quiet of the forest by the sharp report of the gun, he 
destroys or drives away the birds, and thereby stimulates the production 
of insects, which become ialmost the greatest pests of the agricultural 
interests of the country. Nature has given to birds an appetite and an 
instinct which teaches them exactly when and how to go to work to capture 
and destroy insects and their eggs; and if the number of eggs produced by 
insects is wonderful, so the number destroyed by a single bird is marvelous. 
Bradley says that a pair of sparrows will destroy 3,300 caterpillars in a single 
week." Another reliable ornithologist states that two old birds with five 
young will destroy in a single day's feeding 700 insects. If two birds can do 
so much work for us, think of the vast multitude of birds in the fields, as yet 



52 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

escaped the hunter's onslaught upon them, and we can get an approximate 
estimate of their helpfulness in protecting our forests and agricultural 
interests. 

Ants do a great deal of mischief sometimes. A brood of partridges will 
eat up a whole hill of them in a day, but the hunter does not hesitate to 
shoot the last partridge even when rearing her young. 



FOREST ZOOLOGY. 



OUR GAME ANIMALS. 

Except where the law defines when men may or may not trap and kill 
them, no provision has been made by the state to protect, much less 
propagate, our valuable game animals, such as the moose, the deer, the 
otter, the beaver, the bear, the fox; and such prohibition is generally a 
nullity when the hunters get into the woods. They pay no regard whatever 
to the preservation of any such animal. They like to kill the wolf because 
there is a bounty on it. They are more likely to let the lynx live, though 
he is said to kill more young deer than the wolf. Like the angler aqd the. 
axman, they take the last of the best, caring nothing for the needs of the 
future. 

Our moose, once quite common, are nearly extinct. The law now forbids 
shboting them at all, but this makes no difference with the hunter when he 
gets a chance to shoot one. Our deer are lessening. The slaughter of 
them is by the wholesale. A few years ago the beaver and otter were 
numerous; now and then a solitary one is found, and that is trapped. The bear 
is meeting the same fate, and so the fox and the mink. In a slight degree 
our laws do check the spoiliation, but in the main they are inoperative. 
Our game animals — they are going with our native woods. What an utter 
absurdity to pass laws regulating the shooting,' and yet do nothing to save 
the forests in whose fastnesses they seek a refuge and find a homel 

MAKSH HAWK, Circus Hudsoiiius . 

This hawk, common in our woods and prairies, lives on crickets, lizards, 
frogs, snakes, small wild birds, and domestic chickens when the shepherd 
dog is not around; but does not kill a tenth part as many of the latter as 
the skunk, that is pursued with less onslaught. Mice and gophers consti- 
tute a major part of the hawk's food% Valuable as its service is, most 
everybody tries to exterminate this "warrior of the skies." 



■/. 



FOREST ZOOLOGY. 53 

Dr. A. R. Fisher, of the Division of Ornithology and Mammalogy, 
Washington, D. C, says: "Although this hawk occasionally carries ofE 
poultry and game birds, its economic value as a destroyer of mammal pests 
is so great, that its slight irregularities should be pardoned. * * * The 
marsh hawk is unquestionably one of the most beneficial as it is one of our 
most abundant hawks, and its presence and increase should be encouraged 
in every way possible, not only by protecting it bylaw, but by disseminating 
a knowledge of the benefits it confers. It is probably the most active and 
determined foe of meadow mice and ground squirrels, destroying greater 
numbers of these pests than any other species, and this fact alone should 
entitle it to protection, even if it destroyed no other injurious animals." — 
Report of Secretary of Agriculture, 1889, p. 372. 

COMMON SCREECH OWL, Mccjas copsasid. 

This wood-haunting owl is no better appreciated than the hawk. It 
does sometimes knab a partridge, a prairie chicken or a warbler, but its 
favorite dish is mice and gophers; and at night it is on the hunt for these 
rodents in the forest brush, in the orchard and field, around the barn and 
corn-crib. This and the Burrowing Owl also relish grasshoppers, crickets, 
beetles, etc. Dr. Samuel Aughey says: "It is largely an insect-eating 
bird." A great mouser is the owl, and sensible farmers let them stay during 
severe winters in their barns, thus protecting their grains. Let the wise 
old owl, then, be "fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth." 

GAME BIRDS. 

Among our most valuable game birds of the forest and water-dotted 
meadows, are the ducks and wild geese. The partridges, prairie chickens, 
plovers, grouse and quails should also be included in the list. The meadows 
of the wild woods are their hatching grounds. Fast as these dry up under 
deforestation, they retreat. Preserve the woods and they will propagate 
to bless us by devouring insect pests and supplying our tables. "As long 
as there are no retreats or building-places where the feathered friends of 
ours can rear their offsprings, we need not look for their aid in fighting 
our insect enemies." 

AlSr UNPARDONABLE FASHION. 

Not less than 5,000,000 birds are annually murdered to adorn the hats of 
women and young misses! They wear them even to church and listen to 
that gospel which teaches that "Not a sparrow shall fall to the ground 
without your Father's notice." 

BIRDS PLANTING FORESTS. 

The benefactions of our birds are by no means circumscribed to protection 
of our crops by their devouring preying insects nor to the food they supply 
us with. In his "Origin of Species," Charles Darwin shows how certain 
birds annually cross the Atlantic, bearing forest and other seeds adhering 
to their claws and beaks, depositing them on the islands and continents, 
some of which will spring up and live. It is not too much credit to say 



54 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

the birds and squirrels have planted the forests of the world, and by right 
they are theirs to live in. With a view to save them for food, no doubt, 
like the dog that buries his bone of meat, crows have been known to dig 
holes in the ground with their beaks and there deposit acorns which sprout 
and grow into great oaks. No birds, perhaps, have done more to carry 
seeds from one part of the world to another, taking root where they can, 
than the wild geese, which are fast learning to leave us for other regions 
to escape from utter extinction. 

INSTRUCT THE BOYS AND GIRLS. 

Considering the inestimable value of the mammals and birds herein 
mentioned, also of other insectivorous birds, such as the wood-pecker, the 
robin, the thrush, the wren, the swallow, the meadow-lark, the rose-breasted 
grosbeak and yellow-billed cuckoo (scarce in our state), that feed upon 
caterpillars and potato bugs; considering, too, the value of our fishes, 
•whose best qualities always obtain in our cool woodland waters, it does 
seem that, aside from more efficient laws, our educational curriculum 
should include forestry and forest zoology, applicable to all our graded 
schools. As we love our country and aspire to make it better for our living 
in it, the very best we can do is to so instruct the boys and girls that they 
will devoutly care for and peroetuate the natural bounties we all inherit. 



ECONOMIC. 



WILD CONDITIONS. 

In its wild state the prairie cannot reforest itself. Long before the 
white man came, the nomadic Indians scourged it with fires for centuries; 
buffaloes and grasshoppers devoured every sprouting tree; and ever after 
this desolation it has been beaten and "ovened" by dry winds, forestalling 
the needed precipitation. Hence our hard struggle to make a beginning 
of reforestation. After several years of soil culture, we are safe to venture 
with pioneer trees. In one sense *'the forest creates its own favorable 
conditions of growth." But we must first comply with the conditions of 
starting the forest. Scattered trees cannot stand the strain. "It is the 
effective shading of the ground that the changed conditions under the 
forest cover will be brought about; it is by masses of trees that the sun's 
power is broken, and it is by large areas distributed over the vast expanses 
that ultimately the force of the winds will be broken." 



ECONOMIC. 55 

COLD AND SOUR LANDS. 

"Allow no stagnant miasma holes," says Col. John H. Stevens, "nor 
useless eyesores to destroy the symmetry of your lovely farms." Consid- 
erate attention to adaptation of soil to tree and tree to soil is just as 
essential in the art of forestry as on any other special line of agriculture. 
Suppose a farmer has a slough of cold and sour soil and wishes to cover it 
with trees — the very best use — what should he plant in it? He should 
plant none until he has eliminated the cold and sour conditions by plowing, 
pulverizing and crop-raising, until the alkaline salts are dissolved and thus 
prepared for tree appropriation. Then he may be able to raise there almost 
any species of indigenous trees. 

TBGE DESERT PATCH. 

Suppose he has a high and dry, gravelly or sandy patch, what can he do 
with it to best advantage? He has never raised anything on it, and despairs 
of trees, for he may not have succeeded on good soil — not knowing how, or 
if knowing, not having done his duty. He is no farmer who lets his soil be 
master. Work it up, as with the slough, and sow on it, in the late fall, 
about two bushels of ash seeds per acre, and harrow them thoroughly, and 
thinly cover the entire area with straw, manure or other litter. Next 
spring they will sprout up. Then keep out weeds and fire and let them 
struggle on. They will soon begin to replenish the soil by carpeting it 
with decaying leaves that hold the moisture and feed the trees. Within a 
decade you can safely introduce soft maples, box elders, elms and other 
trees, for you and nature in harmony have made a soil to grow them in. 

CRANBERRY AGRICULTURE. 

The wild swamps among the woodlands — what has nature put there? 
Scrawny black spruces, clumps of tamarac here and there on iittle raised 
islands, pitcher plants, blueberries, mosses innumerable. The peety stuff 
underneath is water-soaked. It were unjust to nature's economy to call 
such lands unprofitable as they are. They are her reservoirs, held there 
uMder the moss and vine covering, keeping up the water-flow to the lakes 
and rivers. But it is Improvident to let them remain in their wild 
condition when land is so much in demand. They should be drained, and 
the drainage controlled, so that the outflow shall not run to waste, but 
be husbanded in the great lake centers and canals ere long to be dug for 
irrigation. This done and surface soil prepared, no farming and no other 
business could be so lucrative as to devote these swamps to cranberry 
agriculture. 

Thus it is that our sloughs, our desert patches, our swamps and bogs, our 
oak-openings, our burnt districts, our stony ranges, our bluffy slopes, can, 
by proper management, be covered with trees and used for wild fruit raising 
of some sort. 

NATURAL FORESTRY INSUFFICIENT. 

When we undertake retrenchment along this line, why not do it business 
like? Nature takes no cognizance of the wants of our industries. Natural 



56 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

selection of flora is what will survive in the struggle for existence, irre- 
spective of value to us. Practically not over twenty-five per cent of all 
the forest trees indigenous to the state should be specially encouraged for 
tree culture. The "fittest" means the most needful and profitable. 
Growing the "good, bad and indifferent" is far from wise economy. "In 
the forests of the future," says Adolph Lue, secretary of the Ohio Forest 
Bureau, "no tree of an inferior or no commercial value, unless it is used as 
'nurse trees,' should be or will be tolerated." 

INDIGENOUS vs. FOKEIGN TREES. 

There is a sickly mania prevailing in our towns for the introduction of 
foreign trees not adaptable to our climate, when some of our native trees, 
perfectly acclimated and equally if not more beautiful, are scarcely 
noticed. The state has especially provided at our Experiment Station for 
tests as to fitness of foreign vegetations, and it would be a saving of 
expense and a surety of greater success in the tests, if people would give 
heed to what is recommended at headquarters. Before looking abroad for 
the rare and novel, common sense suggests that we first develop our own 
forest resources and plant and save what is reliable and useful and beautiful. 
All things considered for an evergreen, what from Europe or anywhere else 
in the world can excel our native white pine, or any of our substantial oaks 
and lindens or ashes? We have growing wild innumerable quantities of 
flowers and shrubs, which, if culled out and cultivated in our home 
arboretums, would emparadise our state. Why not seek and cherish the 
things of value in all our woods and shady nooks and pay as yet less 
attention to the foreign, which may fail us? 

PAEKS FOR ALL THE PEOPLE. 

Much attention is paid to parks for our cities, and most of our villages 
follow suit. Nothing contributes more to thje health and contentment of 
the masses than these rural retreats. But why limit park improvement 
and its educative influences to the populous centers? The monotony of 
country life that tends to drive the young folks into the surfeiting cities 
can be largely neutralized by legislative encouragement to the development 
of public parks in the country places. One of the very best ways to enrich 
the state is to transform the waste lands in every county and township 
into free forests for the people's rest and recreation, serving also as public 
wind-breaks and water reservoirs. 

A few years ago congress set aside a limited tract of wild land at and 
around Itaska Lake for a state park. This has nothing to do with the 
proposed forest reserve, and is based on an entirely different plan. Its 
area ought to be enlarged the better to subserve the object sought. Itaska 
Park deserves special care and public favor. It is all important to rescue 
the pines there from being stolen, and all that picturesque region from 
fires, thus conserving our streams and lakes at the headlands of the Mis- 
sissippi. 



ECONOMIC. ■ 57 

RECKLESS WASTES. 

Take the country over, it is safe to say that ten per cent of our soil runs 
off into the streams and rivers, utterly lost to us. We are thus losing the 
best part of our farms. Silly men, what have we been doing to impoverish 
our lands and pockets? Why, we have planted to the water's edge; plowed 
the slopes and inclined plains, without making any provision whatever to 
prevent waste of soil, till, in some places, it becomes sterile as that of 
Sahara. Not infrequently we have thus bared it to the under-stratum of 
gravel and clay. Heavy showers and hot suns have hardened what is left, 
preventing the water from soaking down for subterranean drainage, and 
away goes the soil and debris down the slope, reducing the value of the 
farm, piling it into the rivers, making harbor improvements more expensive; 
and then men wonder why they have poor crops. 
v 

NEXT THE FLOOD. 

Small causes combined produce great results. " The numerous tiny 
riys and runs, scarcely noticed by the farmer, center their quota in the 
river, multiplying at every advance, and then the flood, carrying off our 
soil, drowning cities and villages, destroying immeasurable property and 
many lives." People look on dazed and call it "the anger of God;" and it 
is His anger in the sense of reaping what we have sown — the penalty of 
neglect and misuse. Only a forest economically managed can prevent these 
wastes and ruins. "The forest cover with its interposing foliage and 
undergrowth, its protecting floor of fallen leaves and twigs, its intricate 
root system and its fallen trunks and branches, first retard the rain on its 
way to the ground, thus breaking its force, and then retard the surface 
drainage and prevent the rush of water which takes place over naked soil." 

FOREST FiftES. 

Travel on what line we may, we are confronted with burnt districts. 
All along for miles upon miles it is one continuous blackness of despair. 
The tamaracks in the swamps are swept down as by a cyclone. Here and 
there stands a dead pine amid the dread solitude. Among the black stumps 
some forlorn poplars are trying to get a foothold — a sad retrogression of 
our timber lands. Farther back from tho railroad here and there are 
clumps of living trees, but without exception in every place where the 
pines have been recently cut and huge piles of refuse left, the ruinous 
effects of fire are seen in all their terrors. In other localities, where limbs 
and leaves have accumulated for years, the fires have also swept and killed 
all the yoing growth, and more or less injured the large trees. See how 
their angry tongues have lapped to death the yellow and white birches, 
even eating far down into their roots! These and valuable pines and oaks 
are a prey for worms. 

Millions of dollars worth of property, consisting of timber, camps, 
implements and hay-stacks are destroyed every year. Remote homes 
are burned up, and sometimes whole villages, and hundreds of lives lost, 
and yet absolutely nothing is done to avert such calamities. Lumbermen 



58 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

and resident settlers say, "It does not pay to try to suppress the fire- 
scourge." Were the fire uncontrollable, like a cyclone, there might be 
some sense in refusing to meddle with it. 

Most of the forest fires are the result of sheer carelessness. Campers do 
not vigilantly guard against the escape of the cooking flames; poachers let 
them run; men throw burning cigar-stubs into the dry tinder, and in an 
instant the woods are on fire; men set fire to their "felled piece," or a dry 
grass meadow, that their stock may feed on the subsequent .green herbage, 
and away the angry fiend leaps and rushes, till millions of property values 
are ruined in an hour; sparks from the railroad engine ignite the combusti- 
ble stuff along the thoroughfare, and the engineer drives on ahead and lets 
the ruin go on. As if it would not pay to do something by way of 
prevention! 

"Do you imagine," says John Birkinbine, president of the Pennsylvania 
Forestry Association, "that the farmers of any section of the , state would 
fail to hunt out and punish the vandals who would destroy wantonly 
either a field of wheat or a stack of grain or hay, that represented the 
growth of but part of a year over a few acres, or that they would hasten to 
aid in putting out the fire? Yet this same community has undoubted'ly 
seen forest fires follow one another until but few wooded areas have 
escaped. Its residents can recall numerous instances where many miles 
of timber were ravaged, the fire continuing for days, with no public protest 
save against the inconvenience of a smoke-laden atmosphere, and no 
concerted action towards checking the flames until fences, barns and 
homes of individuals are threatened." 

Calamities of this kind are never single in effects. Then why is nothing 
done to pevent such destruction? Men don't seem to think about what 
ought and can be done. They are evidently dead-locked by the fire-king 
— held as in a dread negation. "The best we can do," say the lumbermen, 
"is to cut every pine as we go that is over eight inches in diameter, and 
make the most of the situation." 

SERIOUS INJURY TO THE SOIL. 

H. B. Ayers, who is familiar with the condition of all our wood-lands and 
well posted, estimates "that two tons of dry vegetable growth per acre is 
the least through which fire will follow. In the forest, I think as much as 
100 tons per acre are frequently burned; while the average prairie fires is a 
consumption of four tons per acre, and of forest fires, ten tons per acre. 
On this basis over 100,000,000 tons of dry vegetable material is consumed 
each year in the forest. The effect of repeated burnings is both* logically 
and practically to reduce a fertile soil to a desert. By combustion, part 
of the vegetable matter which, decaying, would become a store of vegetable 
food, is passed as gases into the atmosphere, and blows to other regions. 
The ashes, a small proportion of the whole, lie on the surface to be leached, 
mostly into the streams; or, if the soil be open, to a depth from which the 
tardy new growth cannot recover it. What plant food remains on the 
surface commonly centers into a growth of weeds and brakes which again 



ECONOMIC 59 

are burned and dispersed. After this operation has been repeated a few 
times, nature often ends it by refusing to produce a growth sufficient to 
support a fire. Where sandy lands cleared by fire are farmed, the first 
crops are commonly good, but decrease from year to year, until unprofitable. 
Rocks, covered by a light soil, when burned over are laid bare and 
commonly remain so. The lands held by the government probably suffer 
the most loss. Marketable property, as well as resources, is destroyed by 
fire. The census of 1880 reports losses by forest fires to the amount of 
$25,462,250. " 

REMEDIAL MEASURES. 

The following is the draft of a bill, applicable to all the states, furnished 
by Prof. B. E. Fernow and approved by Hon. J. Sterling Morton, secre- 
tary of agriculture: 

AN ACT FOR THE PROTECTION OF FOREST PROPERTY. 

FOREST COMMISSIONER. 

Section 1. Creates a forest commissioner, whose office may be either an 
enlargement of some existing office, or much better, a separate one, with 
adequate compensation in either case, to be appointed by and reporting 
directly to the governor. 

Sec. 3. Prescribes the duties of the forest commissioner, namely, to 
organize, supervise, and be responsible under the provisions of this act for 
the protection'of forest property in the state against fire. In addition he 
is to collect statistics and other information regarding the forest areas in 
the state, and the commerce of wood and allied interests; especially such 
information as will explain the distribution, value, condition and ownership 
of the woodland. This information and the results of the operation of this 
act, together with suggestions for further legislative action to be embodied 
in annual reports. 

Sec. 3. Provides for the giving of a bond by the forest commissioner for 
the faithful performance of his duties, and fixes fines for such neglect in 
performing the duties of the office as may be proven, and explains the 
manner of imposing and collecting such fines. 

I ORGANIZATION OF FIRE SERVICE. 

Sec. 4. Constitutes the selectmen of towns, or the sheriff's deputies, 
constables, supervisors, or similar officers, as fire wardens. If preferred, 
special fire commissioners may be appointed by the forest commissioner 
with the advice of county commissioners, or both methods of providing fire 
wardens may be employed together. The towns are to be divided into fire 
districts, the number and boundaries to be governed by the exigencies in 
each case, and each district to be under the charge and oversight of one 
district fire warden. One of these should be designated as town fire 
watden, to take command in case of large conflagrations. The town fire 
warden and at least fifty per cent of the district fire wardens should be 
property owners in the county, unless a sufficient number of such cannot 



60 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

be found or a considerable number refuse to serve. A description of each 
district and the name of the fire wa^rden thereof are to be recorded with 
the forest commissioner and the town clerk or similar officer. 

Sec. 5. Provides for employment of special fire patrols in unorganized 
places in any county and during dangerous seasons, especially in lumbering 
districts, and for cooperation of forest owners. Wherever unorganized 
places exist in a county or so far distant from settlements as to make dis- 
covery of fires and speedy arrival of regular fire wardens impossible, or 
wherever the forest owners whose property is specially endangered require, 
the forest commissioner may annually appoint special fire patrols, to be 
paid at daily rates, the owner paying one-half the expense and the state 
the other half, such patrols to be under the regulations of this law, and to 
report to the nearest fire wardens. The manner of appointment and the 
matter of compensation and duties are to be formulated by the forest com- 
missioner. 

Sec. 6. Defines the powers and duties of fire wardens; tatake measures 
necessary for the control and extinction of fires; to post notices of regula- 
tions provided in this law and furnished by the forest commissioner; to 
ascertain the causes of fires and prepare evidence in case of suits; to report 
each fire at once to the forest commissioner on blanks furnished, giving 
area burned over, damage, owner, probable origin, measures adopted, and 
cost of extinguishing; to have authority to call upon any persons in their 
district for assistance, such persons to receive compensation, as determined 
by the selectmen or county commissioners, at the rate of not to exceed 
fifteen cents per hour, and to be paid by the town or county upon certifica- 
tion by the forest commissioner. 

Persons refusing, when not excused, to assist, or to comply with orders, 
shall forfeit the sum of $10, the same to be recovered in an action for debt in 
the name and to the use of the town or county, or for the fire protection 
fund. 

Fire wardens shall be paid $10 a year as a retainer, besides days' wages 
at the same rates as sherififs or similar officers for as many days as they are 
actually on duty, and shall be responsible for prompt extinction of fires and 
be amenable to law for neglect of duty. The district fire warden shall call 
on the town fire warden in case of inability to control fires, and the town 
fire warden shall have sheriff's power to enlist assistance, as provided in 
case of a mob. 

FIRE INDEMNITY FUND. 

Sec. 7. Provides for the creation of a fire indemnity fund, each county to 
pay into the state treasury $1 for each acre burnt over each year, the 
special fund so constituted to be applied in the maintenance of the system 
provided by this act and for the payment of damages to those whose forest 
property has been burned without neglect on their own part or on that of 
their agents. 

The burned areas shall be ascertained by the county surveyor and shall 
be checked from the reports of fire wardens by the forest commissioner. 
All fines collected under the provisions of this law shall also accrue to the 
fire fund. 



ECONOMIC. 61 

JURISDICTION AND LEGAL REMEDIES. 

Sec. 8. Establishes jurisdiction and legal proceedings in case of prose- 
cution of incendiaries and adjustrtient of damages, and imposes upon every 
district judge the duty, in charging the grand juries of his district, to call 
special attention to the penal provisions of this act and of any similar acts 
providing for offenses against forest property. 

Sec. 9. Charges the forest commissioner to issue and publish, by posters 
and otherwise, reasonable regulations regarding the use of fires, such 
regulations to contain special consideration of campers, hunters, lumber- 
men, settlers, colliers, turpentine men, i*ailroads, etc., and to be approved 
by the governor. 

Sec. 10. Makes it a misdemeanor to disobey the posted regulations of 
the forest commissioned, or to destroy posters, or to originate fires by 
neglect of the same; provides that the prosecution shall be prepared by the 
forest commissioner; and imposes fines and imprisonment in addition to 
damages. Fines should be double the actual damages; one-half to go to 
the fire fund, one-half to the person damaged. 

Sec. 11, Makes it a criminal act, subject to indictment, to willfully set 
fires, and imposes fine? and imprisonment. 

Sec. 12. Any person whose forest property is damaged by fire not 
originated by his own neglect, and who is able to prove neglect on the part 
of the fire warden, may call upon the forest commissioner for award of 
damages, whereupon the forest commissioner, in conjunction with the 
county authorities, shall investigate the case and shall refer his findings to 
the judicial officer of the district, who shall charge the grand jury to indict 
any offender against this act and adjudge any neglectful fire warden, or 
other officer, or any person refusing to act upon order of the fire warden. 

Any neglect on the part of the forest commissioner to investigate and 
fine in each case within one year from the appeal of the owner shall be 
followed by dismissal, unless reasonable cause for failure be shown. 

LIABILITY OF RAILROADS. 

Sec. 13. Charges railroad companies to keep their right of way free from 
inflammable material by burning, under proper care, before certain dates 
to be established by the forest commissioner. Failure to do so upon 
notification by the commissioner shall be followed by the arrest of the 
superintendent of the section, who shall be liable prima facie to procedure 
under section 10. 

Sec. 14. Provides for the use of spark arresters, failure to comply with 
this provision to be followed by arrest of the superintendent or other officer 
in charge of the motive power and by procedure under section 10. 

Sec. 15. Fires originating from the tracks of a railroad company shall 
be prima facie evidence of neglect on the part of the company, and the 
engineer and fireman shall be liable to arrest and procedure under section 10. 

Sec. 16. In all cases where fire originates through neglect of a railroad 
company or its agents, both the company and its officers shall be liable for 
damages under the provisions of section 12. 



63 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

Sec. 17. Establishes special liabilities for damage by fires in case of 
railroads under construction. 

FIRE INSURANCE AND STOCK LAWS. 

Sec. 18. Provides for the incorporation of forest fire insurance com- 
panies. It states where cattle are allowed to roam, provisions to stop this 
practice should be enacted. 

FURTHER DUTIES OF FOREST COMMISSIONERS. 

Sec. 19. Defines minor duties of forest commissioners, namely, to co- 
operate with superintendents of schools and other educational institutions 
in awakening an interest in behalf of forestry and rational forest use. 

Sec. 20. Provides for salary and other expenses of the office of forest 
commissioner, which should be liberal in proportion to the responsibility of 
the office. 

Sec. 21. Repeals all acts and parts of acts inconsistent with provisions 
of this act. 

"woodman, spare THAT TREE!" 

Hear this wail from Michigan: 

"Not very many years ago," said Manager Stevens, of the Cranberry 
Lumber Company, "if the prediction had been made that lumber would 
have been shipped into Grand Haven, Muskegon and other east shore Lake 
Michigan towns within the life-time of the old prophet, the statement would 
have been received as idle talk. Much wilder would that statement appear 
as applied to the Saginaws. But already considerable lumber is being 
shipped to the lower Lake Michigan towns, and what is being done for 
Muskegon, will shortly be done for Saginaw — her yards will be stocked 
from outside sources." 

If Michigan had done forty years ago what it is not yet too late for Min- 
nesota to do with profitable results, provided for the restoration of the 
forests from which matured trees had been cut, she would not now be 
timberless, and her great lumber interest would not be a grinning skeleton! 
A proper administration of the forests of Michigan would have given her a 
perpetual succession of matured forests, and her lumber business would 
have been without end. Under that system Michigan would not have 
made so much lumber in any one year as now stands on her records, but in 
a hundred years she would have produced infinitely more. She might have 
had a good square meal of lumber every day of her life, but she elected to 
have a feast for a few years and a famine to all eternity! That state now 
sees the error of her ways when it is everlastingly too late; will not Min- 
nesota see hers while salvation is yet possible? 

The remaining pine lands of the state are now in or are rapidly passing 
into the hands of one syndicate of inordinately rich men, made rich by our 
vast natural wealth of forest that they were permitted to appropriate and 
devastate in gratification of their insatiate greed. This "Weyerhauser 
Syndicate," as it is called, now owns an absolutely controlling interest in all 
the available pine timber in the state, and with its holdings in Wisconsin 



ECONOMIC. o3 

is the largest owner of pine lands in the world. The people of the state, of 
the great treeless region that stretches out to the west and north, will soon 
be bound hand and foot by this many-tentacled pine-land devil-fish. 
Whatever it may elect to charge for lumber, the puny mortals that crawl 
beneath its large arms will be compelled to pay, with the result that untold, 
unrighteous millions will fall into its coffers.— Farm, Stock and Home. 

UTILIZING OUR WOODS. 

The Forestry Association has never put a thing in the way of utilizing 
our forest products, though we have been charged with so doing. What 
we ask for is a wise and prudent use of what nature has provided for us. 
We want lumbermen and manufacturers to understand our position and 
credit us as their supporters in all legitimate and honest enterprises de- 
pendent on forestry. What we want is this: To improve the forest by cut- 
ting, save the "fittest" of the younger trees for future use, and retain the 
forest floor and forest roof intact for the beneficent purpose of preserving 
the springs of the water-sheds to our lakes and rivers. 

OUR SURPLUS WHITE BIRCH. 

In Minnesota are immeasurable quantities of small white birch {Betula 

papyracia) that spring up with the poplars on the denuded districts and where 

the fires have raged. The fires have changed the chemical conditions of 

the soil injuriously, thus placing forest evolution on the retrogressive line; 

but the divinity inlaid in nature, ever true to her laws, builds there again 

as best she can, and builds what is adaptable, thus paving the way again 

from the retrogressive to the progressive, for the oaks and pines and maples 

to return and bless humanity. But there are lucrative uses for all things. 

We should make the most of the situation, despite the raids and ruins men 

have made of the bounties of providence. The great body of our white 

birches are young, and altogether too thick for healthy forest growth. If 

we do not thin them out, nature will. Why not aid in the fitting process 

for profit? To cut so small trees for lumber would be useless. There are 

calls for them on profitable lines. 

An enterprising firm in Alpena, Mich., manufactures 15,000,000 thread 
spools from the young white birch for the Eastern factories. The material, 
it is said, is getting scarce in that state. That kind of wood also is profit- 
ably converted into spring bobbins, knife trays, medicine boxes and the 
like. Why not appropriate such surplus material in our woodlands before 
the fires get in or nature's art of thinning out destroys it? 

OUR OSIERS FOR WILLOW-WABE. 

The Red Osier {Salix purpurea), largely grown in our country, is recom- 
mended, but it does not seem to thrive as well with us as in Europe. The 
"fittest" has not yet been fully tested for safe ventures. 

It is claimed by men engaged in the business that the Belgian and French 
varieties thrive best on high ground. It is estimated that during even the 
first three years the properly cultivated willows, under ordinary circum- 
stances, will produce from 3,000 to 5,000 pounds of peeled willows ready for 
market, the price of which is ten cents per pound, wholesale. 



64 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL.. 

It requires 65,000 twelve-inch cuttings per acre, well drained and plowed, 
sixteen inches deep. Cultivate shallow, and mulch. During the winter 
cut the rods down close to the ground. Rightly managed, the willow farm- 
ing will be profitable on that lot for fifteen years; then newly plant. 

UMBRELLA AND WALKING STICKS. 

A trade in the above commodities is of great" proportions; and whoever 
engages in the business of raising them from the thickets will find it in the 
near future a paying industry. We can grow them from seed sown broad- 
cast on our properly managed prairie or woodland soils. Suitable for the 
market are our Red and Jack pines, spruces, birches, elms, maples, ashes, 
oaks, box elders, diamond willows, etc. The value of the sticks can be en- 
hanced by artifices in producing oddities for heads and handles. They can 
be cut in a few years. 

Presenting this industry as a lucratiye one, "Hardwood" says: "America 
furnishes a great variety of woods and canes for both walking and umbrella 
sticks, and a number of concerns make a business of collecting and dealing 
in them, and a large number are exported to Europe, while a much larger 
number are imported from every quarter of the globe. Millions of young 
saplings from the forests of the entire United States and Mexico, and canes 
from the brakes of the South, are consumed annually in the trade." 

HOOP-POLES. 

There is no need of advising men who live among our native trees to thin 
out the clumps of the ashes for hoop-poles. They are doing that and thin- 
ning the species out of existence. Say, leave a few, please, that the gen- 
eration of the twentieth century may credit us with having sense and 
philanthropy enough to transmit a type of the "fittest." But what a 
profit any of us could make from our woodlands or prairie acres, were we 
to raise the ashes thick as they could healthfully grow from broadcast 
seeding and keeping out the weeds and grasses. 

SEEDLINGS FROM THE WOODLANDS. 

Nature sows her seeds bountifully, but owing to soil conditions only a 
few can sprout; where Jocalities are specially favorable success is certain. 
Why not prepare conditions there and raise plants by carloads from the 
prairied Northwest? The investment would pay, and at the same time im- 
prove our native woods. 

MATUBE TREES. 

As in the cases just stated in respect to very young trees, the removal of 
the mature ones should be made to subserve two objects, market profit and 
forest improvement. As says an American forester: 

"True forestry recognizes the forest as a crop to be harvested when ripe, 
but asks that this crop, requiring decades and even centuries to mature, 
should receive at least equal consideration with others which demand but 
a few months to complete their growth. It seeks to have the frugality 
which encourages the farmer to utilize the straw threshed from his grain 
evidenced in making use of the tops and limbs of trees felled for timber. 



ECONOMIC. g5 



It realizes no essential difference in the folly of cutting a field of grain 
when but a part of it is fit for the reaper and denuding an area of forest 
land of which a portion only is in condition for service. The friends of 
forestry consider trees as much a gift of the Creator as any other vegetable 
.WM .7 r^^ognize that being placed here for the use of man, man 
should use them when matured. It is not the use but the abuse of the for- 
ests against which we are arrayed." 



SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 

At a meeting of different forestry organizations held in Albany, N Y 
March 1894, among the other matter-of-fact things presented for senous 
thought was this, by John W. Wood, a lumber dealer, of Boston, who, after 
detailing the scarcity of timber on special lines, stated that there are "pro- 
gressive lumbermen among the friends of the forestry movement"; that 
such do not "stand to the forests in the light that the potato bug does to 
the potato plant." He added: "The question for the lumberman to settle 
is^ where is he to find the material on which to continue his business? 
Wood can be had from the tropics for certain purposes, but it is very ex- 
pensive All the mountains of our country have been scoured by men on 
foot and on horseback who were seeking fresh lumber supplies, and the 
question now is, where is the wood to come from?" 

In an address delivered by Col. Piatt B. Walker, a prominent lumberman 
of Minneapolis, at the forestry session of the Horticultural Society Jan- 
uary 11, 1892, he gives this voice of warning: "The destruction of forests in 
America during the century (especially the last half) is unparalleled in the 
world 8 history, both in its extent and in the ferocity of its slaughter The 
bulk of the timber which adorned the country over, the Middle states in 
particular, was consigned to the flames to make way for the plow This 
timber comprised a long list of varieties of useful and valuable woods If 
the oak, walnut, cherry, ash and other woods which went to the log heap 
or into fence rails, were standing to-day in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana' 
^ would net enough to give a stone mansion to every farmer in those states' 
Be it said, in extenuation of this almost crime, that its perpetrators were 
not prophets, and could not see that this world of timber could -ver be 
utilized or would grow into enormous values for domestic as well as export 
purposes. The destruction of our pine forests has proceeded for the last 
quarter of a century at a rate that will soon deprive us of a supply of this 
timber. Eastern Michigan is practically denuded and relies on Canadian 
timber to run her mills, and the western half will soon be in the same con- 
dition, with no outside supply available for her mills. The Southern states 
have not, as yet, made such fearful inroads on their timber resources but 
they are aflBicted with the same mania for destroying which has chara'cter- 
ized the Northern states. Another generation will complete the destruc- 
tion of the invaluable timber supply which adorns that section of our coun- 



66 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

try. They are offering every possible indticement to secure men and means 
from any part of the world to come and hew down their forests and carry 
away the proceeds. The difficulty seems -to lie in the low valuation placed 
upon the timber. This, in the nature of things, will continue until we are 
compelled to resort to timber culture, as they have in Europe, for our sup- 
ply." 

Prof. B. E. Fernow, chief of the forestry division, says: "That it is now 
time to consider the question of future supplies may now be inferred from 
the following rough estimate, the only kind possible with our present sta- 
tistical knowledge: "We use in the United States, according to estimates 
based upon census and other figures, over 22,000,000,000 cubic feet of wood 
annually. Of this enormous amount (about 350 cubic feet per capita) over 
4,000,000,000 cubic feet of the best timber are made into lumber (between 
30,000,000,000 and 40,000,000,000 feet board measure); railroad construction 
requires about 500,000,000 cubic feet; and fencing takes an equal amount; 
but by far the largest consumption is for firewood. An uncertain amount 
is burned up every year in forest fires, which rage over the western mount- 
ain country especially, and which swell the total consumption, probably, 
to beyond 25,000,000,000 cubic feet annually. During the last three decades 
an increase of about thirty per cent in consumption for each decade is in- 
dicated. The area covered with wood growth is less than 500,000,000 
acres. If all the land area not known to be treeless or in farms were under 
forest, the acreage would not exceed 850,000,000,000 acres, but the lower 
figure is probably more nearly correct." 



DEMAND FOR SPRUCE. 

To supply the raw material for the 1,250 tons of ground wooa puip, 
chemical pulp and sulphide pulp, now used in the United States, requires 
about 2,200 cords of spruce each day. Every twelve months 100,000 acres 
of forest is cleared of its mature spruce, or of such as can be converted 
into pulp. Nearly 1,700,000 feet of spruce logs are used up for this pur- 
pose every 24 hours, or upwards of 500,000,000 feet per annum. For a safe 
estimate, not less than 15 per cent should be added to this consumption at 
each year of its repeated manufacture, to furnish a supply adequate to the 
demand. 

INCREASE OF THE BUSINESS. 

During the last ten years the business has increased 500 per cent. Five 
years ago the ground product was estimated at $12,375,000. Its uses are 
constantly augmenting. It continues to be the great staple of paper 
manufacture. Already it is transformed into wheels, horseshoes, water- 
pipes, pails, tubs, flower-pots, domestic utensils and furniture of every 
description, carriage bodies, building ornamentations, protective armor to 
torpedo rams, bullets for rifle use, boots and shoes, bed-clothes, apparel for 
the body, food products, alcohol, and even human teeth, and how many 



ECONOMIC. 67 

more uses the near future will develop we cannot now enumerate. Spruce 
wood, not constructed into pulp, constitutes sounding-boards of most of 
our musical instruments, and when free from knots and shakiness brings 
an enormous price for this purpose. 

ALARM OF THE MANUFACTURERS. 

Should not an industry so vast and important be studiously guarded by 
legislation? We are so fast exhausting this providential source of art and 
wealth and comfort, that pulp manufacturers, in the East especially, are 
alarmed and are looking about experimentally to find, if possible, material 
to take the place of spruce. It may be discovered. But this anticipation, 
illy founded as yet, should not deter vigilant action to spare this tree 
from extinction. If a substitute be found, the commercial value of the 
spruce cannot lessen on other lines of manufacture. 



Tree Planting in the Red River Valley. 

Many residents of the Red River Valley have had much difficulty in 
raising planted trees greatly to their discouragement. When trees 
naturally grow along some of the rivers there, it should inspire them with 
hope. Evidently where failure occurs, it is due to improper management. 
Of course if their purchased trees are defective, and they are apt to be so 
when purchased of unscrupulous tree peddlers, or damaged by exposure to 
sun heat while planting, or by shabby planting or by neglect to cultivate 
after planting, the trees will die, and that speedily. The following extract 
from a paper by Rev. O. A. Th. Solem, read at the forestry session of the 
Horticultural Society, January 11, 1894, gives a sure index of success in 
that valley under right management. Halstad, where this forester lives, 
is located in Norman county, 47>^ degrees north latitude. 

" Six years ago I made an attempt to plant evergreens, but was careful 
not to procure trees from the canvassing agents. I gave my order to a 
responsible and highly recommended nursery. My trial order gave entire 
satisfaction, and as a result I now have several thousand trees of 
different varieties. Last year I had the pleasure of distributing a goodly 
number of these trees among my friends. 

*' I now have sixteen different varieties of evergreens, ranging from two 
inches to five feet in height, a majority of which seem to be thrifty and 
doing well. Scotch pine grows very raidily. ' Colorado Blue Spruce' 
grows quite slow, but pleases and engages my attention the most. It is 
my intention to secure as many as possible of this fancied variety. I have 
quite a number of this variety from seed. Of deciduous trees, I have a 
vast assortment, such as elm, American linden, American larch, red 
cherry, European birch, etc. American larch grows very rapid here. Red 
cherry and European birch remain unmolested as yet, but cannot give any 
definite opinion as to their hardiness this being the first winter of my 
experience with this variety. 



68 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

"I planted a portion of black locust seed last spring. These grew to a 
height of about eighteen inches, and have not as yet been injured by frosts. 
I noticed that a few of these black locust seedlings had been slightly 
nipped by the frost, while others remained entirely untouched. 

"Black walnut trees planted four years ago were slightly touched by 
frost the first spring after being planted; since that have remained thrifty 
and uninjured. 

"The interest taken in tree culture increases each year, and my attention 
has been called to the fact that more trees were planted last spring than at 
any other time in the history of the Red River Valley; but I cannot refrain 
from expressing regret in the face of the fact that cottonwood trees are 
planted in excess of any other kind, well knowing from personal experi- 
ence and observation that the cottonwood is the least adapted to the soil 
and climate of this country." 

LOST $200,000 ! 

In his practical lecture, Feb. 23, before the Farmers' Institute held in 
Minneapolis, Hon. Geo. T. Po\,ell, speaking on "Fertility of Soil," dwelt 
with great earnestness upon the absolute necessity of planting forest trees 
for the purpose of enriching the soil with the fertilizing properties of 
decayed vegetation, and with moisture, which the farmer must have for his 
plants or fail of a crop. He also emphasized the commercial value of trees, 
constantly rising in price all over the country, owing to the almost 
universal scarcity; and illustrated his statement with an incident that 
occurred in Indiana: 

In early years when the farm was developing to be something, the 
farmer referred to, planted four young black walnuts. Under proper 
treatment they grew well and at last became magnificent trees, vast and 
clean in trunk and limbs, bearing delicious nuts every year. About this 
time a lumber-dealing gentleman, having observed them, one day offered 
the owner fifty dollars each, if he would cut them down for market. 
Though hard pressed for money, the farmer declined the offer. A few 
hours after, returning home, the farmer said: 

" Wife, I have lost $200,000 to-day." 

"How can that be," she laughed, "when you never had so much in your 
life?" 

Here he related the offer of the lumberman, adding, "If when I planted 
those four walnuts, I had been sensible enough to have planted four 
thousand such, don't you see I would to-day be worth $200,000?" 



FOREST CHEMISTRY. 



BASIC ELEMENTS. 

It is a well known fact that the air is composed riiainly of three basic 
elements — oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. Oxygen is the support of com- 
bustion and respiration. For this reason vast quantities are needed, and 
providentially it is the most abundant element of the earth, and the most 
widely distributed. It forms from forty-four to forty-eight per cent of 
the solid crust of the earth, eight-ninths of water and about one-fifth of the 
air. 

MECHANICAL OPERATIONS. 

The basis of the soil is mineral, rock. The coarse pebbles or gravel, com- 
posed for the most part of quartz, lime and feldspar, were once solid rock, 
and so the sands and clays. What has crumbled the crystalline rock into 
such shapes? One of the agencies is water, that sinks into the crevices 
and porous constituency of the rock, and by its expansion in freezing and 
reactionary contraction, pry the huge pieces apart and break them asunder. 
All this while carbonic acid gas and oxygen in water are "Time's busy fin- 
gers" wearing away the hardest granites. The roots of the great trees 
penetrate into the cracks, following wherever the dust has crept in, and by 
their growth dislocate their imprisoned walls. The glaciers carry great 
stones in masses of ice, grinding slow, but grinding fine, down over the 
mountain slopes and over the valleys of the mountainous countries, form- 
ing vast strata of clay, digging out monstrous hollows in the softer rock 
along the crystalline sides and bottoms for subsequent lakelets to stay in. 

Gerkie, in his Text Book of Geology, page 339, thus outlines the mixed 
soil-making process: "On the level surface, the weathered crust may re- 
main with comparatively little rearrangement until plants take root in it, 
and by their decay supply organic matter to the decomposed layer which 
eventually becomes what we term 'vegetable soil.' Animals also furnish a 
smaller proportion of organic ingredients. Though the character of the 
soil depends primarily upon the nature of the rock out of which it has been 
formed. Its fertility arises in no small measure from the commingling of 
decayed animal and vegetable matter with decomposed rock. " 

CARBON DIOXIDE. 

In combination with bases, carbon occurs in enormous quantities^ par- 
ticularly in ordinary limestone, chalk, marble, calc-spar, etc. By the 
"chemistry of nature" it is crumbled, oxydized, enters a gaseous state, and 



70 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

forms itself into a compound of carbon and oxygen, carbon dioxide, com- 
monly known as carbonic acid gas. This gas is found more or less in all 
natural waters. Mineral waters contain it in large quantities. It issues 
from the earth, particularly in the region of volcanoes. From our fires, 
ffiom our lungs, from the lungs of all animals, from the processes of alco- 
holic fermentation and of decay of vegetable and animal matter, from even 
the sugar in our ripened fruits as they fall to earth and undergo spontane- 
ous changes, is evolved this gas, constantly flooding the air we breathe, and 
yet its relative quantity in the air is small, about three parts in ten thou- 
sand. 

NOT A POISON. 

Carbon dioxide is not a deadly poison, as reputed of it. The reason why 
it is destructive to life, is because it does not contain the oxygen necessary 
for breathing processes. One dies, then, by suffocation, as in drowning in 
water. Wherever it is in excess — oxygen not being in proportional bal- 
ance — there is danger. Air in which a candle will not burn is not fit to 
breathe. 

THE CENTRAL ELEMENT. 

Yet this gas is the central element of organic nature. "There is not a 
living thing," says Ira Kemsen, professor of chemistry in the Johns Hop- 
kins University, "from the minutest microscopic animal to the mammoth, 
from the moss to the giant tree, which does not contain this element as an 
essential constituent." 

The plants root themselves in the mineral kingdom and evolve its ele- 
ments to finer conditions. The food of animals largely comes from plants. 
The food of plants largely comes from carbon dioxide of the air. The leaves 
and other tissues of plants have the power to decompose the carbon dioxide 
with the aid of the electric rays of the sun, appropriating the carbon and 
giving the oxygen over to the animal kingdom. Thus each kingdom "lives 
and thrives on what the other rejects." Under this beneficent balance of 
nature the composition of the air is kept mainly constant. 

"When the life process stops in the animal or plant, decomposition be- 
gins, and the final result of this, under ordinary circumstances, is the con- 
version of the carbon into the dioxide." 

To what extent this retrogressive action goes it is difficult to determine. 
The inference is that in unbalanced states of the gases, a certain percent- 
age falls back into crystallization to be taken up again by the plants. For 
even centuries we may locally unbalance nature, as in excessive deforest- 
ation, but we cannot do it with impunity. Nature severely punishes the 
spoiler. Man robs himself. Prof. Houston well says (Outlines of Forestry, 
page 145) that in many cases the denudation of the soil produces a perma- 
nent disturbance of nature, "from the inability of such section of the coun- 
try to sustain plant life." 

STOKED ENERGY. 

Dana, in his Manual of Geology, page 323, argues, "That the carbon 
which is now coal, and was once in plants of different kinds, has come 



FOREST CHEMISTRY. 71 

from the atmosphere, and, therefore, that the atmosphere contains less 
carbonic acid than it did at the beginning of the carboniferous period, by 
the amount stowed away in the coal of the globe." 

This storage of energy is going on to-day, although not in the same de- 
gree. "As long as life continues," says Kemsen, "plants and animals are 
storehouses of energy." The chemical process of setting free the heat 
evolves a power of work. Thus the burning of the coal drives the engine, 
cooks our food and warms our rooms. Oxidation or decomposition of car- 
bon dioxide is an evolution of latent heat not always perceptible or appre- 
ciable, but sufficient in its silent operations to run the machinery of plant 
and animal life. Think of the vast storage of these elements in our grow- 
ing woods, providentially reserved for our use. 

WOODLAND LATENT WARMTH. 

All plant life is dependent on the decomposition of carbon dioxide and 
water, taking place constantly on the face of the earth. In the storage 
process or in its decomposition, heat, originally wrought by the action of 
the sun, is the result, which work Is, no doubt, an unseen factor in plant 
growth. Humboldt claims "that trees are conductors of heat, and convey 
the warmth Of the atmosphere to the earth when the earth is colder than 
the air and most needs it." And so the reverse. Trees being the storage 
of heat, they radiate it in winter. The foliage in summer being a shield 
against the hot sun, and the evaporation underneath being an expanding 
process, there is a reaction to cool down. The forest, then, is an equalizer 
of temperature in winter and summer. 

WATER. 

Water acts as a solvent, and is essential in the chemical processes herein 
mentioned. It is composed of one volume of oxygen to two of hydrogen. 
The ratio by weight of equal volumes of hydrogen and oxygen Is 1:15.96. 
Water is a very stable compound. Without it there could be no life sus- 
tained upon the earth. Hydrogen is contained in combination with carbon 
and oxygen or with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, and occurs "in most 
substances of animal and vegetable origin, such as the various kinds of 
wood and fruits and the tissues of all animals." 

NITROGENOUS ELEMENT. 

Nitrogen is the main constituency of the air. It does not support com- 
bustion nor respiration. It is not a poison, but animals would die in it for 
want of oxygen. Give twenty-one volumes of oxygen and seventy-nine 
volumes of nitrogen, or by weight twenty-three per cent of oxygen and 
seventy-seven per cent of nitrogen, and human beings and animals will 
live in the mixed compound. 

Nitrogen, it is said, "dilutes the oxygen." This is an inadequate con- 
ception of its use. It is an essential constituent of plants and animals. 
"The animals get their nitrogenous compounds from the plants, and the 
plants get theirs partly at least from the soil." When the plants and 
animals decompose in the soil, by a process known as death, "the nitrogen 



72 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

contained in them is gradually converted into salts of nitric acid or nitrates, 
and if the decomposition takes place in the air, the nitrogen is converted 
into ammonia." 

Prof. Snyder, of our Experiment Station, says: "Nitrogen supplied for 
plants and crops is the most important factor, economically considered, of 
all the elements that are necessary for plant food." 

HOW PLANTS GET NITROGEN FROM THE AIR. 

Botanists have of late discovered that the little nodules or tubercles on 
the roots of pines, oaks, willows and many other trees, also on those of 
leguminous plants, such as the clovers, peas, beans, lupines, etc., so far 
from being evidences of disease, are root-ganglia, so to speak, developed 
by a species of bacteria, by which the plant gets its atmospheric nitrogen. 
Prof. E. W. Allen, assistant director of the ofiBce of Experiment Stations, 
Washington, D. C. , applies this important discovery to agriculture, bulletin 
16, p. 6: *'It is sufficient for practical purposes to know that nitrogen is 
taken up from the air by the growing plant, directly or indirectly; and that 
this nitrogen assimilation takes place as a result of the life of bacteria. It 
is a peculiar fact that few, if any, root tubercles are formed when legum- 
inous plants are manured with nitrogen; the plants must first hunger for 
nitrogen before the tubercles are formed, and the presence of tubercles 
indicate that the plant is taking nitrogen from the air." After showing 
the necessity of aiding crops by "soil inoculation," a light dressing of 
soil "in which the kind of plants it is wished to grow have been previously 
grown," he urges enriching the soil with nitrogenous elements by green 
manuring of plants producing them, clovers especially. "It will thus be 
seen that by green manuring with leguminous crops it is possible to manure 
the soil with nitrogen from the air, a free and inexhaustible source, and 
thus avoidbuying fertilizers containing much nitrogen. This greatly lessens 
the expense for commercial fertilizers, for nitrogen is the most expensive 
element the farmer has to buy." 

CORRELATION OF AGRICULTURE WITH FORESTRY. 

In the cases cited we learn, in a new light, the delicate correlation of 
agriculture with forestry. What the intelligent farmer does with the 
green manure of leguminous plants whose nitrogenous properties they have 
extracted from the air, nature is constantly doing in her massive forests 
where the spoiler hath not trod. She manures the forest soil with green 
and ripened leaves; they form a perfect mulch that economizes the moisture 
which the trees must have; they oxidate and decay next to the surface soil, 
whence is evolved the needed nitrogen for plant growth. Thus the roots 
by a chemical art that we cannot fathom, take up the primates of the 
mineral kingdom and transform them into living tissue. If on this pro- 
gressive line there is yet a deficiency of nitrogen for healthful assimilation, 
the lower forms of life, bacteria generated by these processes, build ganglio- 
batteries on the famishing roots, and the trees are re-invigorated for 
woody structure. This chemical operation, whereby pure oxygen is tendered 
us, preparers a soil for future agriculture, rich in nitrogenous and other nee- 



FOREST CHEMISTRY. 73 

essary materials for crop growing. The forest is, therefore, the chief source 
of soil fertility, costing us nothing except care for the trees. In view of its 
inestimable value Humboldt exclaimed: "How foolishly man destroys the 
forest cover without any regard for consequences, for thereby they rob 
themselves of wood and water!" 

EVOLUTION OF MOISTURE. 

Chemistry is evolving this great truth, that the vegetable kingdom is 
primal in the orders of life; that, while dependent on its co-factors for its 
existence, in contributing to their support it thereby supports itself. The 
vegetable kingdom is in fact an essential medium of that universal chem- 
istry, by which, with the sun administering to all in reciprocity, water is 
evolved. We might as well say that the constituents of the tree are not 
the tree when properly put together, as to say water is not a part of the 
tree nor developed by the tree. The gases that make water are in all things, 
and by the chemical agency of vegetations they are evolved Into the com- 
pound called water. 

Dr. J. C. Brown, a conservative English writer and acknowledged author- 
ity, is bolder in his conclusions than most of his peers. After fairly stating 
both sides of the question as to whether forests do or do not promote rain- 
fall, he thus strongly fortifies himself: 

"While moisture is necessary to make and keep forests, yet the forest in 
turn conserves and reproduces moisture. These necessary and reciprocal 
functions should not be arrayed against each other, any more than the 
centrifugal and centripetal forces of nature, so as to invalidate the fact 
that forests do retard the rainfall after precipitation and have a general 
effect on the humidity of the atmosphere and soil." 

In further elucidation he suggestively maintains that moisture is aided 
by the chemical change accompanying vegetation by the combination of 
oxygen with hydrogen. He says, in his "Forests and Moisture," page 31: 
"It is not unreasonable to suppose that all the ammonia taken up by the 
plant may have been decomposed, the nitrogen combining with oxygen, set 
free by the decomposition of the carbonic acid yielding material for the 
woody structure and appearing as atmospheric air, and the hydrogen com- 
bining with the oxygen and forming water." 

Dr. Brown but voices what is impliedly revealed. All chemists agree 
that among the essential constituents of plant food for structure, when 
refined and cooked, so to speak, are carbon and nitrogen, and that, 
through the medium of the plants, the cooking process is performed under 
the electric rays of the sun that wrest these elements from their crude alli- 
ances, and when hydrogen and oxygen are thus set free, they combine and 
form water. 

What is the oxidation of stones and metals down in the ground but a 
slow burning of oxygen and hydrogen, forming water? From the food we 
eat and the air we breathe, as with trees, is exhaled and cast out a watery sub- 
stance, mixed more or less with carbonic acid gas, which when refined again, 
as described, and exchanged, the animal and vegetable kingdoms are kept 
in balance. What is it but a water-forming process? As to the amount of 



74 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

water thus evolved through the vegetable and animal economics, is yet un- 
known. The phenomenon invites the chemist and the forester. Mean- 
while we must content ourselves with this fact, that, given the moisture, 
we have the forests; given the forests, we have the moisture increased. 

When we "learn to heart" what chemistry teaches, that the forest equal- 
izes the temperature and moisture, and that its roots, leaves and other tis- 
sues are nature's great retort in which the gases are distilled, we also learn 
what an unpardonable crime it is to wantonly destroy the forests. 



CLIMATIC. 



COSMIC AND LOCAL FACTORS. 

"The climate of a country," says Humboldt, "is the combination of calor- 
ific, aqueous, luminous, serial, electrical and other phenomena, which fix 
upon a country a definite meteorological character that may be different 
from that of another country under the same latitude and with the same 
geological conditions." 

Cosmic factors are based upon certain fixed principles, such as the in- 
clination of the earth's axis' to the plane of the ecliptic, which causes ther- 
mal variability; the position of the sun in the heavens in its annual swing 
between the tropics, which contributes to the same result; the circumferen- 
tial velocity of the earth on its different parallels, lessening proportional to 
distance from the equator, which produces differences of wind-waves that 
directly play into meteorological phenomena; the relative position of land 
to water areas, having unlike heat capacities which, in turn, give direction 
and force to air and sea-currents; the elevation, the latitude, the configura- 
tion of a country, which with other co-factors are directly concerned in the 
make-up of climate, before whose fiat must we bow and acknowledge our 
utter weakness. 

OUR SITUATION. 

Minnesota extends from north latitude 43 degrees 50 minutes to 49 de- 
grees, and from 89 degrees 29 minutes to 97 degrees 5 minutes west longi- 
tude. It is therefore central In the North American continent, midway 



CLIMATIC. - 75 

between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico and the 
Arctic ocean. Its average elevation is 1,275 feet above the sea-level, the 
highest land in the great continental trough between the Gulf of Mexico 
and Hudson's Bay. 

OUR DEPENDENCE. 

Whatever humidity may be projected toward us from the Atlantic and 
Pacific oceans is largely intercepted and drained by the'AUeghanies and 
Rockies, and such winds come to us dry. The winds from the Gulf of 
Mexico and the Arctic ocean encounter comparatively slight obstructions 
as they sweep over the continental trough. When these collide over us — 
if those from the poles are not too dry to dissipate the moisture — precipita- 
tion may ensue. 

PRECIPITATION FORTUITOUS. 

Our average precipitation is twenty-five inches. Countries near the sea 
have uniform temperature and therefore more regularity of precipitation, 
but in a continental climate like ours there are so many agencies at work, 
precipitation is fortuitous, and yet acts, of course, under irrevocable laws. 
Were there nothing of a local nature to intercept and tone down our 
winds, the state and entire plain west of it would have the characteristics 
of the steppes of Russia, barren, dreary and uninhabitable, save here and 
there by groups of hungry wolves and clumps of coarse grasses in the burn- 
ing sands. 

THE AIR ON HIGH PLAINS. 

All vast, high plains have dry, hot or cold winds, as illustrated on the 
central plains of Asia, in the pampas and llanos of South America, in the 
heaths of Germany and the lands of Prance. Climatic differences always 
are related to differences in land elevations. Scientists estimate that an 
elevation of 350 feet will lower the temperature equal one degree of latitude 
or seventy geographic miles poleward. In round numbers our average lat- 
itude is 46 degrees; our average elevation is 1,375 feet; then, outside of the 
modifying influences of environment, our average climate corresponds with 
that of about 50 degrees north latitude on the level of the sea. 

OUR MODIFIED CLIMATE. 

But our climate is far from what the rule mathematically warrants. 
Considering latitude and elevation, we have a luxuriance of flora. Though 
subject to sudden extremes of heat and cold, and severe storms when they 
come, even our hottest days have compensative forces, and our coldest are 
electric and bracing-up to energy. Our nights are cool; our skies clear and 
so our waters. Taken as a whole, our Northwest climate is superb. To 
what cause or causes shall we attribute this remarkable feature of Minne- 
sota? 

OUR HIGH LANDS. 

In a general sense Minnesota is an undulating plain, but it has its special 
high lands, hill ranges, clustered knobs, Leaf Mountains, Sawteeth, Mesabi 
and Giant ranges. Our mountains in the northeast angle of the state rise 



76 • TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

1,600 to 1,800 feet above the sea. The Mesabi Range, north of Lake Supe- 
rior, attains an altitude of 2,200 feet. These northern elevations are so 
arranged with respect to each other as to give rise to the different river 
and lake systems of the state. 

CLIMATIC EFFECTS OF THE MESABI RANGE. 

The temperamental and therefore meteorological changes produced by 
these elevations are very marked. Note especially those of the Mesabi or 
Iron Range, stretching diagonally' over a portion of the state, continuous 
in the Coteau des Prairies farther on toward the south. According to the 
ratio of 350 feet elevation to equal one geographic degree, the climate on 
the highest crest of the Mesabi Is about that of southern Labrador. 

These highlands are to Minnesota what, on a vaster scale, the Rockies 
are to the states there environed. They serve the purpose of cooling the 
moist winds to precipitation that feed our water systems, and thence 
developing the great forest that has blessed us so much. When the winds 
from these rain-making batteries in the north, gaining vapor-accessions 
from the intervening forests and lakes, meet the warmer moist winds of 
the Gulf of Mexico, from over the western prairies, the product may be 
rainfall. 

CLIMATIC INFLUENCES OF OUR WATER AREA. 

Water absorbs and radiates heat less rapidly than land. Water, there- 
fore, retaining its heat longer, cools the temperature in summer and 
heightens it in winter. The climatic beneficence arising from this source 
alone can be better appreciated by noting the quantity and area of our 
great northern reservoirs, as reported by Maj. W. A. Jones, of the 
Engineer Corps, U. S., in charge of the reservoirs at the head-waters of 
the Mississippi, five of which are now completed. 

Lake Winnibigoshish: watershed, 1,422 square miles; water surface, 
110,206 acres; storage capacity, 344,000,000,000 gallons. 

Leech Lake: watershed, 1,225 square miles; water surface, 110,632 acres; 
storage capacity, 225,000,000,000 gallons. 

Pokegama: watershed, 630 square miles ; storage capacity, 35,000,000,000 
gallons. 

Pine River: watershed, 602 square miles; water surface, 15,206 acres; 
storage capacity, 56,000,000,000 gallons. 

Sandy Lake: watershed, 384 square miles; water surface, 7,522 acres; 
Storage capacity, 15,600,000,000 gallons. 

A project is on foot to make a reservoir of Red Lake, the largest inland 
lake of the state, the area of which is estimated at 1,930 square miles. 
We have here a vast evaporative surface to supply our forests and 
agricultural plants, when precipitated, the vapors of which also soften 
down the raw winds from the highlands, thus making our climate so clean 
and salubrious. 

PRAIRIE AND FORESTAL BREEZES. 

In this connection we must consider what a power Lake Superior is in 
respect to our climate. It belts the northeast part of our state wherever 



CLIMATIC. 77 

the polar winds have direct action. Owing to vacuous air over our heated 
prairies these winds, moisture-laden, tend to blow inland, precipitating 
snow, hoar-frost or rain upon our highlands. 

Prof. M. W. Harrington, chief of the Weather Bureau at Washington, 
D. C, says: "As the interior air of the forest is generally cooler, in the 
warm season, it must be heavier, and the difference of temperature must 
be often so great that the heavier air will overcome the obstacles to its 
flow and gradually pour out near the ground. Its place will be taken by 
the air above, which will settle, and thus there may be set up a forest 
circulation, exactly corresponding to such a system of winds as is found In 
land or sea breezes, or may be found over a lake .at night." 

Thus our water area, together with the vast body of trees co-acting in 
unison, engender what answers to a sea breeze blowing inland upon the 
open, heated regions by day, and these land exposures, cooling off quicker 
at night than the water and forest, send the air waves back in cool 
refreshment. 



DO FORESTS PROflOTE RAINFALL? 

Because a drouth affects a forest, it does not follow that it is not a factor 
in the promotion of rainfall. We can and do rob the forest of Its power to 
perform its natural functions. Break down its roofy foliage, burn up its 
leafy floor, and the dry conditions of the forest atmosphere, arising from 
rapid evaporation, forestall precipitation. This forest unbalance reacts 
disastrously upon our vast agriculture, whose hungry mouths devour what 
rain descends, thus largely preventing flowage to the woodlands, and our 
lakes and rivers recede, trending to a general desert in land and atmosphere. 

HUMAN INTERFERENCE. 

The following extract, occurring in "Outlines of Forestry," is from 
Geikie's "Text Book of Geology," page 471: "Human interference affects 
meteorological conditions, 1. By removing forests and laying bare to the 
sun areas which were previously kept cool and damp under trees. * * * 
2. By drainage, the effect of this operation being to remove rapidly the 
discharged rainfall, to raise the temperature of the soil, to lessen the 
evaporation and thereby to diminish the rainfall." 

TESTIMONY OF FORESTERS. 

Collating the facts of history, a majority of scientific foresters maintain 
that, where great forests have been removed, the rainfall has lessened, and 
where great forests have been restored, the rainfall has increased. Among 
the many testimonies are those of eminent professors who have given the 
matter the closest possible consideration. In his "Report Upon Forestry," 
1877, Franklin B. Hough cites the testimony of the distinguished French 
forester, Prof. Becquerel: "St. Helena— fully forested when discovered 
in 1503. The introduction of goats and other causes led to the removal of 



78 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

its forests. Heavy floods and severe drouths were the result; replanting of 
forest trees toward the close of 1700 resulted in a more uniform rainfall 
and its better distribution. Subsequent destruction of the forest have 
again brought back the original condition of affairs." Prof. Becquerel also 
tells us that when discovered in 1815, the Island of Ascension "was barren, 
and so destitute of water that supplies were brought to it from the main- 
land. The effects of planting trees resulted in increased rainfall." 

Prof. Fernow says: "While the forest everywhere does not increase 
precipitation over its own area, yet a large system of forests over an 
extensive area will influence the quantity of precipitation over and within 
this area." 

Prof. Harrington cites reports from sixteen meteorological stations 
in Germany that are always near forests, and 16 like stations near regions 
without forests, and in most every instance the forest station shows the 
more rainfall. That at Lintzel was made a date of comparison with a 
series, being a reforested district. The results are given after the accum- 
ulating tree-plantation was five years old, and it was discovered that com- 
mencing 1882 and ending 1888, the percentage of rainfall increased steadily 
with the extent and height. Experiments were also made on forested and 
non-forested elevations, covering vast areas, and again the forest led in 
percentage of rainfall until at the highest point it was nearly double in 
surplus. After mentioning striking instances in India, Java and Celebes, 
covering many years of experiment, and allowing a margin of fifty per cent 
for errors and general rainfall, the professor cautiously adds, "There yet 
remains an appretiable addition which might be attributed to the growing 
forest; * * * makes a good presumption that a forest does actually 
increase the rainfall to an appreciable percentage." 

Notwithstanding the accumulating evidences that forests promote rain- 
fall, there are prominent meteorologists In our country, of prudent 
research, who maintain "there are no evidences to show that forests cause 
an increase of rainfall." Fortunate for forestry, a world-wide discussion 
on the subject is evoked, which, on comparing notes, will sooner establish 
the truth in favor of the trees; and we of the Northwest, where trees are 
precious, can patiently afford to await developments, confident that the 
natural coolness of a massive forest condenses atmospheric vapors to pre- 
cipitation, where other conditions are favorable. 

"BLOOD OF THE EARTH." 

Differ as we may, all agree with Prof. Marsh, alluding to trees serving as 
equalizers of temperature and moisture, that "when man destroys these 
natural harmonizers of climatic .discords, he sacrifices one of the most con- 
servative powers of nature, and does himself great injustice and harm;" 
and with Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, who thus strongly sums up the 
whole problem: "Forests are the blood of the earth, and in their destruc- 
tion follows the death of nations." 

LAWS OF PRECIPITATION. 

Heat expands moisture* cold condenses it. 

Warm air can contain more moisture or vapor than cold air. 



CLIMATIC. 79 

Vapors afloat in the air, when chilled down so as to coalesce, form mist, 
snow, rain, hall, just as the aerial condition necessitates. 

"Mountains act as condensers," says Prof. Tyndall ("Heat as a Mode of 
Motion," p. 384), "partly by the coldness of their own masses, which they 
owe to their elevation." Cold wind may produce the same result. If the 
wind is comparatively warm and laden with moisture, it (the moisture), 
says Huxley, "will be readily precipitated on exposure to refrigerating in- 
fluences." 

FOREST TEMPERATURE. 

Ordinarily the temperature of the air under and just ov-^r a forest is 
considerably lower than that over an open field; if a vapor-laden wind 
blows over the forest there is a tendency to precipitation. The trees with 
their living foliage and carpet of dead leaves, and the extra moisture thus 
economized, make larger surfaces for heat absorption, preserved in latent 
state. Being thus shielded, the forest is cooler in summer and warmer in 
winter than the open field. When the leaves fall in autumn, they are 
retained on the ground, and over them is spread an even mantle of snow, 
thus preventing the penetration of frost to any great extent, and rescuing 
the roots of the trees and any tender flora from injury. 

Prof. Tyndall shows that the heat-absorbing power of the air is almost 
entirely dependent on the presence of water vapor. As the dense forest is 
more moist than the op^i field— the former being better shielded and having 
more wet ground protected from the direct action of the wind— a thicker 
and wider spread curtain of vapors hangs over the forest, absorbing the 
sun's heat, intercepting its drying tendencies and reactions to damaging 
frosts, and so balancing the temperature, the coolness or warmth of the 
forest air is kept steady and salubrious. A cold wind or chill of the air in 
a vaporous strata of the forest generally causes precipitation, but not 
always. The relative conditions of the air determine this. If a cold air 
wave, charged with moisture, meets a warmer, drier wave, the tendency to 
precipitation is neutralized, the moisture being then scattered and lifted as 
vapors to higher altitude. 

EVAPORATION. 

Evaporation is the result of the ever active agency of heat and electricity. 
It is one of the processes by which plants grow. Without it all life would 
cease upon the earth. It is also a cooling process, self-inductive to precip- 
itation. 

It occurs at surfaces. The greater the water or leaf surface (thickness 
a factor), the greater the rapidity of evaporation. 

Cold lessens the capacity of the air to hold vapor; heat increases the 
capacity. 

The drier the air, the greater Is the rapidity of evaporation. 

Hence, In the Minnesota climate, the absolute necessity of great water 
and leaf supply to produce rapid saturation of the aerial fluid for the 
needed precipitation. 



80 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



FORCE OF WINDS. 



This necessity becomes the more apparent when we consider the disastrous 
effect of our prairie winds. Interesting experiments for the purpose of 
ascertaining the changes in the rate of evaporation affected by the velocity 
of the wind were made by Prof. T. Russell, Jr., of the signal service, in 
1887. "The results of these experiments show that with the temperature 
of the air at eighty-four degrees and a relative humidity of fifty per cent, 
evaporation with the wind blowing at the rate of five miles an hour, was 
2.2 times greater than at calm; at ten miles, 3.8; at fifteen miles, 4.9; at 
twenty miles, 5.7; twenty-five miles, 6.1; and at thirty miles per hour the 
wind would evaporate 6.3 times as much water as a calm atmosphere of the 
same temperature and humidity. Now, if it is considered that the winds 
which sweep the western sub-arid and arid plains is from ten to fifteen 
miles, not rarely attaining a maximum of fifty or more miles, the cause of 
the aridity is not far to seek and the function of the timber belt or even 
simple wind-break can be readily appreciated." 

Not only does the wind dissipate the water, but it falls upon it with 
weight, often uncovering our grains in the early spring, beating our plants 
down and hardening the ground to the great injury of all our vegetations. 
Smeaton, in his ''Philosophical T/ansactions," gives us some figures as to 
the force of wind, at special rates, on one square foot of avoirdupois 
pounds. Thus, the force or weight of a wind blowing at thirty miles an 
hour is 4.439 pounds; at forty miles an hour, it is 7.873 pounds; at one 
hundred miles an hour, a hurricane, it is 49.200 pounds per square foot, 
carrying trees and buildings before it. 

VALUE OF ACCUMULATION. 

While the surface exposed determines the amount of evaporation from 
water courses and reservoirs, it is found that the smaller and slower run 
loses proportionally more than the larger, illustrating the value and pro- 
tection of accumulation. A like ratio applies to a forest. If the trees are 
scattered and far apart, or great gaps obtain by clean-sweep cuttings and 
fires — as is the resultant condition of our native forests to a large extent — 
the evaporation is, of course, far greater than where the trees stand close 
and high. 

FOREST EVAPORATION. 

Owing to cover conserving moisture and the wind-breaking power of the 
trees, the evaporation from the forest is considerably less than from the 
plants in our gardens and fields. The annual evaporation within a forest 
is estimated on data of experimentation at about half that of the open 
field. The forest, therefore, is nature's best economist, steady in action, 
giving when most needed. Evaporation is one of its distributive forces. 
"A forest through its leaves," says L. H. Wilcox, "gives far more moisture 
to the air than the same area covered with water" (about three times 
more), and in Minnesota it measures among the millions of tons of water. 

But plants do not live by water alone, water serves them as a solvent, 
dissolving and preparing substances in the air and ground for vegetation. 



CLIMATIC. 81 

We must also consider that the water evaporated does not all escape into 
the air as vapor, but a goodly percentage is reabsorbed by the leaves as 
soon as breathed out and fitted in the sunned air for wood growth again. 
To a great extent plants adapt themselves to the amount of water at their 
disposal. 

TRANSPIRATION. 

By transpiration is meant the water consumed in building up the body 
of the plant; the larger part being returned to the atmosphere during the 
process of growth. In this operation the quantity of water used is as 
variable as the quantity of precipitation. "Many considerations enter into 
the operation — the stage of plant development, nature of its leaves and 
amount of its foliage, temperature and humidity of the air, intensity of the 
sunlight, temperature and structure of the soil, etc." 

EFFECTS OF OUR NORTHERN FORESTS UPON VEGETATION. 

* 

Note the following facts adverted to by Prof. L. A. Bailey, Jr., of the 
Agricultural College of Michigan, who, with Professors Warren Upham, 
E. W. D. Holway and others, assisted our state geologist, Prof. Winchell, 
in the botanical work of Minnesota in 1886. The expedition, commencing 
July 17th, was located at the south end of Vermillion Lake, near Tower, at 
about 48 degrees north latitude, whence they radiated in all directions, 
mainly between that point and the international boundary. Though their 
search was systematic, they found "a discouraging paucity of species." 
Their discoveries were "an illustration of the law, that species decrease 
with the increase of latitude," and correspondingly, that "the ligneous 
vegetation simply makes a smaller growth." Summing up the situation, 
Prof. Bailey says: 

"In some respects the flora of this region is anomalous. In most of its 
features it differs little from that of Central Michigan, six degrees to the 
southward. This southern cast to the flora finds a ready explanation, 
however, in the fact that Vermillion Lake is separated from the cooling 
influences of Lake Superior by a degree of primeval forest. It is probably 
not so much the character of the winters as that of the summers which 
Influences th3 distribution of plants in these latitudes. The snow must 
afl'ord great protection to all vegetation at this place, and the summers, 
although short, are warm and the atmosphere is dry." 

TREES CREATE CONDITIONS. 

No doubt "the one degree of primeval forest" has something, perhaps 
much to do in mitigating the severity of the cold winds from Lake 
Superior. But there is a greater factor involved than a strip of seventy 
miles of trees. In determining the features of flora in any part of the 
country, we should first take Into our account the prevailing air currents 
and isothermal lines which woodlands more or less direct and modify. 
Writing the editor in this connection, H. B. Ayres aptly says: *'The 
herbaceous flora of Minnesota should be expected to be similar to that of 
Michigan, because the forests create conditions needed by certain plants. 



83 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

The flora of the prairies of northwestern Minnesota differs more from the 
flora of the wooded northeastern Minnesota than wooded Minnesota 
differs from wooded New York." 

"THE SAHARA OF MINNESOTA." 

They who have taken observation know that vegetation is very meagre 
and stunted on the north and westerly shore of Lake Superior, having a 
long and dreary belt several miles wide In some places. This condition is 
traceable to the cold winds sweeping from the north and northeast over 
that great body of water. Suppose the forest inland and westward from 
the desert-like coast were literally destroyed by axe and fire, as is actually 
portending, what would be the effect upon the climate and upon vegetation 
in that latitude, and upon the state at large ? Imagine the whole forest 
from Lake Superior to the Red River and north to the international bound- 
ary, stretching also hundreds of miles- southward — imagine it swept away. 
Nothing is plainer than that the sources of our river system would be 
dried up, and all that Interesting region would be transformed into a 
dreary desert — "the Sahara of Minnesota." The winds from the lake, 
rushing from the frozen north, then uninterrupted — for the forest is gone — 
Intensified and infuriated by the desert, would fall upon our agricultural 
crgps farther south with immeasurable ruin. This is not conjectural ; it 
is reasoning from cause to corresponding effect, from what we know of 
other parts of the world where like furies have been provoked by like de- 
forestation. 

SNOW MANTLE. 

Prof. Bailey speaks of the benefits of snow upon the flora. Remove the 
forests there, and the formation of snow is lessened, because the forest 
humidity is neutralized by the open wind-swept desolation. The forest 
trees trap the snow, mantling the flora, slowly melting and trickling into 
the ground, and furnishing the water supply in the summer to our rivers. 
Nothing could be devised more calamitous to our agricultural and correla- 
tive interests than the destruction of the natural forest in the northern 
part of Minnesota, and nothing should be watched by our legislature with 
more jealous vigilance than the preservation and culture of dense forests 
in all that lake and reservoir region. 

Here the forest reserve system comes up again for consideration, and 
will not down, despite the formidable opposition. Climatic conditions, the 
conservation of our waters, the business interests of the entire state abso- 
lutely necessitate its organization. 

EFFECTS OF HEATED ROCKS. 

In northern Minnesota, more especially along Rainy Lake river toward 
the northeast angle of the state, a country once covered with pines and 
other trees, the fires have at last literally burned them out root and branch, 
leaving huge piles of bare rocks that heat up in the days of summer and 
remain warm in the night. Hence, rain clouds sweeping over that desolate 
surface, formerly condensing in gentle showers, now dry up or pass over 



CLIMATIC. ^3 

to more wooded or watered districts. Were that region reclot A with 
hardy vegetation, followed by trees, it would make an appreciable differ- 
ence in moistening the air and increasing the precipitation. 

OUR FOREST ISOTHERM. 

Several years ago, when the forest was less disheveled by axe and fire, 
it was not uncommon when the temperature indicated five degrees above 
zero in St. Paul, at the same time the thermometer registered twenty-five 
degrees below zero, one hundred and twenty miles west on the treeless 
prairie. It is wonderful what a difference this forest makes in the temp- 
erature of Minnesota. The isotherm, or line of equal heat, of five degrees 
above zero in mid-winter, does not run east and west, as it should under 
equal conditions. "It commences," says Prof. D. R. McGinnis, 'about 
twenty-five miles northeast of Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior, fol- 
lows down the lake shore to Duluth ; from there, instead of going west it 
strikes directly south, and passes a little southeast, possibly twenty miles 
east of St. Paul, and on to the southern line of the state, and thence 
through northwestern Iowa." 

OUR GREAT WIND-BREAK. 

Everybody who has taken any observation knows that every small body 
of timber walling up against our strong winds, shows marked results in its 
influence upon crops. But slight protection makes a palpable difference. 
The French gardeners understand this ; they build tight fences some six 
feet high to protect their plants against a cold wind that comes down 
from the Alps, along the Mediterranean. Such a fence will protect the 
gardens situated a hundred miles to the north of Marseilles. 

" According to Becquerel, a simple hedge of six feet in height will give 
protection to plants a distance of seventy feet, and, according to Hardy, a 
belt of trees averaging three hundred feet will defend vegetation almost 
entirely against the action of the wind. Another authority finds for every 
foot in height, one rod in distance protected." If an ordinary wind-break 
on the prafrie is so efficacious, what must it be on the scale of a great 
natural forest? and what should so concern us as its preservation ? 

DEFORESTATION AND CYCLONES. 

The question is often raised whether cyclones, involving hailstorms espec- 
ially have any connection with the untorested condition of the country. 
NO positive answer as yet has come from the experlmentafon of he sc.en- 
tlsts There are certain cosmic influences at work, lying as y*' beyond 
ou analysis No doubt the configuration of a country, its altitude, .ts 
Stance frl the pulses of the ocean and thence its P;eu"ar atmospheric 
condition play a direct part in such phenomena; but .3 not a forest, or 
rather ?h; want of a forest, a factor concerned in the solution of the prob- 
\^n? Observations In various parts of the world confirm such a con- 
elusion. 



84 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

HOW HAILSTONES ARE FORMED. 

Judging from the mechanism of hailstones, they rotate around a vertical 
axis. They are composed of alternate layers of ice and snow laid over each 
Other like the concentric rings of an onion. If the whirling motion be 
between contiguous rain and snow clouds, it would carry the rain into the 
snow particles, dusting it and freezing it into hail. There are numerous 
coatings of ice and snow, indicating a continuous circling of the wind from 
rain-making into hail, snow and ice-making clouds. If the whirl around a 
vertical axis dips the water particles in and out of different strata of cloud 
temperature, warm rain into freezing, snowy air and back into warm air 
for forming another rain-circle around the icy ball, and so round and round, 
the products are hailstones, small or large according to the number of times 
the dipping process has occurred. 

Hailstorms are, therefore, cyclonic, often moving at the rate of forty to 
fifty or more miles an hour. They drive on out of the hail-manufacturing 
belt with terrible fury upon everything they touch. 

PREMONITIONS. 

These disasters occur on the open plains and prairies. They are most 
frequent in summer, following excessively hot days. They are generally 
preceded by layers of dark gray clouds, moving in angry whirls, accom- 
panied by great electric disturbances of heavy lightning and thunder. 

In his elaborate report of 1877, Franklin B. Hough, then acting as chief 
of the forestry division under the agricultural commissioner, thus credits 
(page 299) the forest as a 

NEUTRALIZER OF HAILSTORMS : 

"It is attested by M. Becquerel, from numerous observations made in 
France, that hailstorms become more frequent as woodlands are cleared 
away, and that although such storms may occasionally pass through a for- 
est of small extent, they will sometimes change to rain over a woodland, 
and again to hail beyond; but oftener they will turn aside or divide as they 
come to a large wooded area. This may be accounted for from the fact 
that the moist air that hangs over a woodland from the evaporation of the 
leaves becomes a conductor of electricity, and thus lessens the effect of the 
storms." 

HAILSTORMS MOVE IN ZONES. 

M. Bailie, in his "Zones des Orages a'Grele," avers that "zones in hail- 
storms in France are profoundly modified by local causes, appearing with 
severity in some districts, and leaving others intact. They have a prefer- 
ence, so to speak, for certain parts of a country, visiting it often, and pro- 
ducing similar effects, observing therein a singular periodicity, returning 
%t intervals of a certain number of days and hours for a series of years, so 
that the periods of two bad years are separated by periods of good years. 
When they come they seldom come singly." The careful observer may 
have noticed similar phenomena in our own country, that hailstorms seem 



CLIMATIC. 85 

to move in zones, and are attended with a "peculiar periodicity." The 
remedy is simple and within our power to apply without recourse to the 
legislature for special appropriations to relieve the sufferers who have lost 
their crops by hailstorms. Build up long and wide belts of trees in the 
storm zone so as to divide them, or at least weaken their force of destruc- 
tion. 

GENERAL TREND OF OUR WINDS. 

Warning against desert conditions arising from forest destruction, Prof. 
W. M. Hayes, of the Experiment Station, St. Anthony Park, demonstrates 
by "the lay of the land" that, while our principal winds in the continental 
trough from the northwest and southwest collide into confusion, their gen- 
eral trend is eastward as resultant of their combined force, and find their 
•'escape across the lakes and down the St. Lawrence river to the ocean. 
That there is something of such a resultant wind is shown by the fact 
brought out by meteorologists, that the most cyclonic storms of this valley 
pass from the west toward the northeast, having, as some one has said, 
their focal center in the vicinity of Iceland. The flowing of this air 
toward the eastward carries most of the moisture to the region east of the 
Mississippi, there giving up enough moisture to have fostered the primitive 
forests with which all that region was covered. The moist air flowing 
away from the elevated plain of the West, left that region supplied with 
air largely from the northwest and southwest. This air, not containing a 
great amount of the moistsre, is warmed up and made to absorb rather than 
precipitate moisture; hence the low humidity of the air, the small rain- 
fall and the consequent absence of trees on the plains and prairies." 

THE AERIAL BATTLE GROUND. 

Minnesota being the average highest land in the continental trough, the 
winds from the gulf meeting those of the cooler northwest are here 
naturally cooled down to precipitation when the air is sufficiently saturated 
with moisture. These meteorological forces, together with those of our 
prairies, highlands, lakes and forests especially, make Minnesota the mid- 
continental battle ground of the winds, the lower strata of which are 
whirled in various directions, just as local conditions necessitate, while the 
strata above the trees and hills are left freer to sweep eastward. Owing 
to environment, evolving temperamental changes, the collision of the lower 
strata of winds educe fogs, clouds and showers. 

FORESTING THE GREAT PLAINS. 

Westward toward the Rockies, known as the Great Plains, there is, 
comparatively, a scarcity of fogs, clouds and dews, and therefore, dimin- 
utive precipitation. This is mainly due to the intense equilibrium of 
sun-heat in that region. Hence the southwest winds of summer, blowing 
over those hot plains, falling alike on the Minnesota prairies, are ruinous, 
sometimes blighting all before them. And such winds will continue to 
bring drouth and agricultural disaster so long as the plains are treeless. 



86 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

Nothing awakens such a dissatisfaction of the country as these merciless 
winds — simoons in summer, blizzards in winter. The only alternative is, by 
the aid of irrigation, to reforest the plains by dense wind-breaks; actual 
forests on a scale of vastness. But it never will be done until the national 
government takes the responsibility. By irrigated forestry on the Great 
Plains, protecting and enriching the farms there, bringing like blessings to 
Minnesota, the intense burn and reactionary chill will be broken up, 
causing climatic variability and more certainty of precipitation with assur- 
ances of successful crops. Adverting to these meteorological changes, 
consequent upon diversified environment. Prof. F. B. Hough, in his 
"Elements of Forestry," p. 16, says: 

"The air in contact with these heated portions expands, and becoming 
lighter, rises on the air from the surrounding spaces coming in to supply 
its place. An upward current is thus formed, and the air rising and 
cooling comes to the dew point, and the moisture becomes visible as cloud. 
A column of smoke from a burning clearing, will sometimes thus form a 
cloud, and may cause rain. (In such a case may not the rain be largely 
resultant of the burning of oxygen and hydrogen, dropping in water?) A 
country interspersed with groves of trees presents contrasts In heating 
tendencies favorable to these upward currents of air." 

OUR DUTY. 

Our duty is plain, that we must augment the diversity of our environ- 
ment by tree and soil culture; that we must haste to retain our water 
systems by the agency of native forestry, and forestry by the agency of 
our water systems; that we must reforest our highlands, which are unfit 
for agriculture, where axes and fires have made havoc, else follow the 
sequences of neglect — the detritus of those highlands, damaging floods 
reacting into more damaging drouths, and thence desert conditions to the 
ruin of all that makes a state. 



5ANITARY. 



VOICE OF THE TREE. 

Voicing the tree as if it were an intelligent being, Elizur Wright says: 
"Let me just whisper in your ear, my kind friend, that what is our food 
is your poison. Don't take that on my authority. Go to your chemist, ask 
him what would be the effect of clapping a bell-glass over Boston. He will 
probably tell you that trees would do something toward keeping the human 
inhabitants from smothering in the poisonous gas of their own breath; but 
they, not being able to consume their favorite food as fast as produced by 
350,000 people (not to speak of horses and furnaces), the people and their 



SANITARY. 87 

horses, cats and dogs would soon choke and die. Without the bell-glass 
the winds waft away the poisonous gas which feeds the forests. Where 
does it go to? Why does it not come back again to plague you ? What 
becomes of it? Ask your botanists, your chemists, all the people who have 
been studying the nature of things since Joseph Priestly discovered what air 
is made of more than one hundred years ago. See if they will not tell you 
that animals could never have lived and cannot live long on this earth 
without forests to purify the air. You may ask the historians, too, if great 
nations have not decayed and become puny and degraded because they 
made broad and fertile valleys bare of forests." 



WATER CONTAHINATION. 

The picture of the real is not overdrawn when it is said that the ruin of 
our forests breeds the pestilence that ruins the city. Where the water 
flow of our rivers is kept up — and only large, dense forests will do this — 
they wash away the filth of the towns through which they flow, and every 
new swift current brings them the very elixir of life. Destroy the forests 
that head the rivers, and they sink lower and lower, and in the hot, dry 
season they sluggishly float down to us an immeasurable amount of unsan- 
itary dregs, and the people suffer and die. Such river water is liable to 
contaminate that of our wells, and what an offensive stench arises from it! 
It is then full of wigglers, microbes, and poisons innumerable. What is 
the primal cause of these miseries ? Simply we have unbalanced nature 
by imprudently, avariciously, unpardonably slaying the forests where the 
pure springs would otherwise flow to us with healing in every wave. 

Prof. J. T. Rothrock, the official head of the forestry movement in Penn- 
sylvania, says: "Fresh-flowing water which maintains a constant level is 
in a condition of the least danger to the health of a community. Frequent 
stages of high water, followed by as frequent periods of low water are a 
constant danger. It is under such conditions that malarial complications 
are most frequent. It is clear that we have reached a period when intelli- 
gent legislation will be required to avert threatened evils." 

CEMETERIES OF NATIONS. 

Whence the cholera and other plagues? When it is said ''from oriental 
population," it is not half answered. That population has destroyed its 
forests, and the very hells of filthiness and plague follow, spreading to the 
western world. Villages surrounded by forests in India, "are never 
visited by cholera, and troops are being withdrawn into forest stations in 
order to arrest the disease which it has been found is invited by removal 
of the forests." Ebermayer's observations are, that "so far no pathogenic 
microbes have ever been found in forest soil, hence this soil may be called 
hygienically pure." 



88 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

There is the Roman Campagna, once the glory of Etruscan industry and 
civilization. "Roman conquests, rapacity and cupidity destroyed the 
neighboring forests, and turned the fertile and beautiful plains into a 
pestilential morass where now only a few shepherds and swineherds drag 
out a miserable and precarious existence." The author of "The Cities and 
Cemeteries of Etruria" (2d Ed. 1, p. 16) says that the unhealthy state of 
the neighborhood of the old Etruscan capital, the. ancient Veil, spread to 
the whole campagna, "which in very early times was studded with towns, 
but under the Roman domination became, what it ever since has remained 
— a desert, whose wide surface is rarely relieved by habitation." 

So in Magna Grecia, in Lombardy, in Palestine, in the Valley of the 
Euphrates, in any and every part of the world where the forests have been 
literally wasted under the ignorance and greed of man, civilization has 
reverted into barbarism. The sequestered deserts have made humanity 
as desolate in body and character as are the howling winds among the ruins 
of ancient temples on those once forested and luxuriant plains. . 

We of the West, boasting of our liberty and national wealth, are pro- 
voking the very causes that destroyed oriental civilization. The health 
boards of the great cities of Europe and the United States give statistics, 
showing that vast multitudes of young children die every year for want of 
the pure, fresh air which trees and plants furnish fit for breathing. Dr. John 
H. Ranch, in his "Report on Public Parks," with special reference to 
the city of Chicago, "gives a series of facts, clearly proving that the' 
infection and diffusion of malaria or noxious emanations are arrested by 
trees, whose structure and canopy of foliage act in a threefold capacity — 
first, as a barrier to break the flow, second, as an absorbent of those eman- 
ations, and third, as eliminators of oxygen." 

GUARDIAN OF HEALTH. 

Springs and wells are more uniform in the woods than in the open, and 
purer and cooler. The forest is the guardian of the people's health. It 
wards off germ diseases. It fits the gases for blood vitalization. It generates 
nitrifying elements under its leafy and moist floor for the growth of our 
advanced plants. By its network of roots it sups up the stagnant water 
that would otherwise breed pestilences. Dangerous bacteria found in 
crowded cities and towns does not trouble wooded districts. Biederman's 
Ceneralblatt (Germanic) affirms that "the innumerable leaves and branches 
of a forest in a manner filter the air, and retain the micro-organisms which 
float in the lower grounds; besides woods cut the cold and dry winds so 
dangerous to the organs of respiration, and render the temperature more 
uniform." The air In treeless streets a-nd badly ventilated rooms cannot 
produce healthful assimilation of blood and tissue, and germ diseases are 
there breeded. Wheat rust, potato blight and black rot are evidences of 
non-oxidized tissues. It is a well-known fact that rheumatic and catarrhal 
troubles are quite common in treeless regions. The free range of acces- 
sive hot and cold winds, depleting vital action, favor the development of 
malicious compounds in the blood. In view of the correlation between un- 



r 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 89 

oxydized blood and disease, both physical and mental, involving fearful 
costs, what public economy is more important for legislation than encour- 
agement to tree planting and preservation? 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF 
THE FORESTS. 



TESTIMONIALS. 

The American Forestry Association has taken the lead for government 
control of the forest cover of the country. Minnesota is perhaps as pro- 
nounced as any other state. The Forestry Association, now stronger than 
ever before, and the Horticultural Society, are a unit in this respect. 
Many of our presses favor it, and educational professors. It is believed 
that were it properly submitted to the people to vote upon, no doubt a large 
majority "would answer in the affirmative. 

Hon. S. M. Owen hits the nail as with a sledge hammer: "Governmental 
forest planting co-existent with governmental encouragement to forest 
destruction, is a bung-hole waste and a spigot-saving policy so idiotic that 
our posterity will be amply justified in derisively laughing at our folly; and 
it is a policy that cannot be changed too quickly." 

Prof. Wm. R.Dobbyn, editor of "The Progressive Age," views the situation 
from a continental standpoint, maintaining what is evident fact, that 
national forestry is the foster parent of our civilization: "If we are to 
profit by the experience of those nations which have created bureaus of 
forestry, and through them have succeeded in reforesting their denuded 
territories, we will never cease agitating until Congress and the various 
states, each in their sovereign capacity, shall establish forestry departments 
of great energy. Nothing less than governmental forestry will save this 
continent from becoming a wind-swept, arid waste, and only intelligent 
agitation will ever create a public opinion out of which must be built those 
national and state bureaus of forestry. In the spirit of the patriot and in 
the spirit of the cosmopolitan, we therefore should agitate for the trees, the 
saviors of our civilization, the promise of our future." 

J. S. Harris, one of our veterans in horticulture and forestry, and also 
Col. Stevens, president of the Forestry Association and of the State 
Agricultural Society, place the great problem on the ground of human 
rights and unmonopolized usufruct of the forests. "There Is no man," 
says the former gentleman, "who has the right to eat up the bread that a 



90 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

future generation wants. He has no right to destroy the forests that 
favorably influence the climatic conditions of our time, and thus make it 
impossible for our successors to till the soil." 

"To be successful," says C. L. Smith, former secretary of the Forestry 
Association, "forestry must be the protege of the state. The interest is 
too great, the stakes too high, the individual too selfish, the profits too 
remote, the climatic and sanitary effects too important, the benefits so 
universal, philanthropists so scarce, that the state should immediately take 
hold of the matter, and do something definite, practical and extensive." 

Judge L. R. Moyer, superintendent of the horticultural station at Monte- 
video, Minn., says prompt measures should be taken to preserve the 
natural forests in the northern parts of the state. "No more timber school 
land should be sold. The state's title to all timbered land acquired at tax 
sales ought to be perfected, and the legislature ought to be prohibited by 
constitutional amendment from ever selling it. An intelligent forestry 
policy ought to be adopted, and measures taken to stop forest fires. As 
crops of timber mature, the stumpage or toe product ought to be sold under 
careful restrictions, so that the forest should be preserved, to the end that 
the state forests should always romain a source of permanent income to 
our noble commonwealth." 

Hon. O. S. Whitmore, editor of "Hardwood," Chicago, 111., a conserv- 
ative exponent of the great lumber industry of the country, said in his able 
address at the forestry session of the Horticultural Society, January 11, 
1893: "Methods of usufruct can and should be controlled by the state. 
Our hurried, feverish national growth has caused this point to be greatly 
overlooked. Should the state act upon it at once, the further destruction 
of forests by fire could be practically prevented. To accomplish this should 
be work for practical, rational forestry." 

PROFITS OF THE NEW METHODS. 

Until we can convince our lumber brothers that government control of 
the forests is more profitable than the present system, they will continue 
to "saw just the same." Mr. Whitmore presented the real merits of the 
situation: "This is a utilitarian age. Man works for the profit there is. in 
it. The most practical part of rational forestry relating to existing forests 
is to convince the owner of a forest, be he lumberman or farmer, that it is 
for his interest to improve upon his present methods of treating it. When 
he shall be made to see plainly that it will pay him and his children to 
handle his timber as a periodical crop to be preserved with care, to be cul- 
tivated in a certain sense, to be protected from everything that might en- 
danger it, as he would protect his corn field from weeds and insects, then 
will rational forestry have performed its greatest mission." 

TAXING TIMBER LANDS. 

There is no question but that lumbermen are considering the question 
whether government control will better subserve their ends as viewed from 
the standpoint of profit. Already they raise objection on the ground "that 
the market value of cultivated trees, say twenty-five years old, does not 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OP THE FORESTS. 91 

cover the taxes Imposed upon the lands where they grow; that the tax 
pric udes forest preservation, and is really a premium offered and enforced 
by tte state to eliminate the trees." This business consideration sways al 
their action, and the trees are going and will soon be gone, unless they are 
met by an argument more powerful than our talk. 

Timber tree, are the growth of centuries, and the planter or saver of 
trees woud of course, know he must die long before his pines or oaks 
reach a paying maturity. Such trees, like the nation itself, mus rem 
vervnec»'^Hy belong to the people as sacred to use as their consftu ion. 
C not'^e long period of their -development demonstrate that on y by 
government centrol can their type be preserved and the.r just usufruct 

'XZtg'the resultant calamities of denuding our woodlands, some of 
our eCng lumbermen suggest non-taxation as an inducement to preser e 
them To this the people will not consent for a single moment. Obvious y 
exemption would induce swifter destruction, for the tax Is then changed to 

the temptation of gain. «o« c+of*. hnnnties as in- 

Aaain lumbermen occupying our ground propose state bounties as in 

dutTiit's to preserve our native f.est. It is . 1^:^^^^:^ 
rubrstLtitra'raoXJeCrtheir share of the bounty tax 
tuhout a local and direct reimbursement; yet the representatives o the 

rr: '^-uen- rj- ^^^^^ :z:^:^^:z:i^ 

re^rdr^uLtCTtTprrso^us, comprising any and aU a^ailab. 

r i'"Cur fn^ r tLf tLrord7;= sZ^ 

re::rirr rcutl" Thrfm^tTrwlth tLatlon en^ed . 
p:arJuo far as it goes; but it is obvious ^he state couM no a«ord to 
pay bounty without limitation to acreage. Hence it wouiq 
the demand for forest accumulation. 



THE BILTMORE FOREST SYSTEM. 



93 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

French Broad River in the western part of that state, its configuration, its 
geological deposits, its meteorological peculiarities, its natural species of 
trees, its injured forest condition arising from haphazard cutting of the 
better trees, frequent fires and the browsing of cattle. Mr. Pinchot says 
that "at the time when the forest management was begun on the estate, 
the condition of a large part of the forest was deplorable in the extreme." 

FIRST year's profit. 

By cutting such trees as was necessary to begin the improvement, amid 
the widespread chaos, and selling the same for lumber, cord-wood and 
railroad ties, there was realized a balance, net, of ^392.40, first year. It is 
presumptive that with judicious and economic management, the profits 
will augment from year to year, and instead of raiding the forest for money 
considerations, it is fitting it to be a profit investment for all the years to 
come. 

ARBORETUM DRIVE. 

A nursery has been established on the estate, already containing more 
kinds of trees and shrubs than there are in the botanical gardens at Kew, 
near London, and the number is being steadily increased. It is the inten- 
tion to plant these along the line of a road to be called the "Arboretum 
Drive." This road, about five miles in length, will run through some of 
the most beautiful portions of the estate, and will be lined for a hundred 
feet on either side by the plants of the collections, making this arboretum 
the finest in existence. 

IMPROVEMENT CUTTINGS. 

The reader will note with what prudence Mr. Pinchot proceeds in the 
start. He found the "old spreading trees were seriously injuring the young 
growth below them, and it was impossible to found a system of management 
on the lives of the older specimens, which, in very many cases, were 
already perishing. It became necessary, therefore, to institute a series of 
improvement cuttings which should remove these older trees, and prepare 
the way for a working plan under the Regular High Forest System, the 
characteristic of which is that the trees of the same age are grouped to- 
gether, so that there are (theoretically) as many separate groups as there 
are years In the age of the oldest trees." 

LIMITATIONS OF CUT. 

He found two limitations imposed themselves at once. "No older trees 
could be cut where the young crop was very far from being dense enough 
to protect the soil, and no cuttings could be made which would cost more 
than the value of the product. The term of six years was tentatively set 
for carrying out these cuttings and the inaugurating of the working plan. 
It was almost impossible to set a shorter period, for the reason that in many 
cases all the old trees could not be cut at once, on account of damage to the 
future crop; and for the same reason not less than five years must intervene 
between the first and second cuttings on the same ground." 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 93 

EFFECT OF THE IMPROVEMENT CUTTINGS. 

''So far as can be judged at this early date, the improvement cuttings 
seem to have accomplished what was expected of them. The appearance 
of the forest where they have passed is much improved, and the young 
trees which have been set free are doing well. But, although it is too 
early to pronounce definitely upon all of their effects, two facts seem to 
have been established. These are, that large trees surrounded by a dense 
growth of smaller ones may be felled and removed with comparatively 
very unimportant injury to the young crop, and that the additional cost of 
the necessary care, beyond that of ordinary destructive lumbering, is so 
small as to be out of all proportion to the result. If this latter fact should 
be established later on in other parts of the United States, as there seems 
little reason to doubt that it will be. Its importance to the future success 
of forestry will be very great. Its value in practice is enormous." 

OUTLINE OF THE WORKING PLAN. 

Under the Biltmore System the working plan is made elastic. Its gen- 
eral objects are three in number: 1. For profitable production, giving 
the forest direct utility. 2. A nearly constant annual yield, which gives a 
steady occupation to a trained force under a permanent organization, and 
making regular operations possible. 3. Improvement in the present con- 
dition of the forest. 

REGULAR HIGH FOREST SYSTEM. 

"These general objects are to be attained by means of two systems of 
management. On the east side of the French Broad the Regular High 
Forest System will be adopted, and the Selection System on the west side. 
In each case the rotation, or the length of time in which a second crop 
becomes ripe on the same ground after the removal of the first, was fixed 
at 150 years. In a theoretically perfect forest, under the Regular High 
Forest System, there would be as many sub-divisions as there were years in 
the rotation. The trees of each sub-division would be of equal age and 
would differ from those of the next sub-division by one year. In the pres- 
ent case, for instance, the oldest sub-division, bearing trees 150 years of 
age, would be ready for the ax; and the cutting, after passing over it, and 
then over all the others in succession, would reach it again at the end of 
150 years." 

SELECTION SYSTEM. 

"The Selection Forest in its perfect state has trees of all ages mixed to- 
gether everywhere instead of being separated into groups of uniform age. 
The annual yield is taken each year from all parts of the forest. But under 
such a method transportation would manifestly be too costly for American 
conditions. Consequently, the Localized Selection System was adopted in 
its place. Under it the annual yield comes from a restricted portion during 
several years; then from another portion during a like period, and so on 
until the cutting has passed over the whole forest. In the present case the 



94 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

yield will come from one-fifth of the area during each period of five years. 
Consequently the cutting will return over the same land once in twenty- 
five years." 

OUR SUPERIOR PRIVILEGE. 

The object of making the Biltmore case so conspicuous in this report is 
to show that order can be instituted in the forests of Minnesota, where the 
conditions are similar. The assurances of success are at least 50 per cent 
ahead of the venture in North Carolina. Our lumber territory, our trans- 
portation by water and rail, our mill facilities, our lumber and fuel mar- 
kets, are superior in every particular. We have at least a hundred-fold 
more raw material to utilize than North Carolina or any other southern 
forested state. 

ACCEPT THE SITUATION. 

"What hinders Minnesota, then, from undertaking to commence a forest 
improvement system, not exactly after the pattern of Biltmore, but as 
our privilege warrants for business enterprise? We have no time to brood 
over the ruined condition of our forests, nor to berate any one for pro- 
ducing those conditions. Let us accept the situation and see if we cannot 
make it pay to bring order out of chaos. 

WILIi LUMBERMEN COOPERATE? 

We cannot reasonably anticipate that lumbermen will pause in their 
work to consider experimental methods, or turn back to reconstruct where 
forest injury has been wrought. Not yet. We must be content with the 
fact that really they are friends of practical forestry, and do countenance 
the object we have in view, but are not ready to adopt It. 

AN AVAILABLE POLICY. 

Prof. S. B. Green suggests the feasibility of utilizing a large tract, a 
whole township perhaps, of the university lands as a branch experimental 
station in the northern part of the state, located among the lakes there 
and protected by the native trees. The chances certainly are excellent. 
Under proper management it would more than pay for itself, and be of 
immeasurable benefit to the state. This would be a good beginning. 

INIMICAL TO A REPUBLIC. 

But individual or corporate ownership of great landed estates, whether 
forested or not, are inimical to a republic. As in the old countries, it ex- 
cludes the common people from the shade and health-giving influences of 
the thickets. It becomes the hunting grounds of the landed aristocracy. 
It fortifies monopoly. Besides such ownership does not secure a permanent 
forestry. Such estates are liable to be. sold and cleared off, and the climatic 
benefits neutralized. Generally private ownership of forests is destructive 
to forests. 

As a rule lumbermen let taxes go by default, after they have cut off the 
timber. This turns such lands over to the state, but the state does no 
better, except to sell here and there a quarter section of denuded land to 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 95 

some poor man who is willing to settle on it. As the state makes no pro- 
vision to forestall annual fires, the ruin continues until the very fertility of 
the soil is entirely eaten out. If this is a practical policy, then is desert- 
making practical. 

TAX TITLES ON* WOODLANDS. 

Where the locality is promising, men buy the taxes on special woodlands, 
denuded of market timber, and hold them for speculation in the future— a 
reprehensible law and business. Our legislature has the right and power 
to foreclose such titles, and to consecrate such lands to forestry in the form 
of parks and reserves. Fires excluded and cuttings economized, even 
without special culture for the present, they would soon begin to recover a 
wooded condition, improving the soil, augmenting in value and blessing 
the people with increase of atmospheric moisture and eventual water-flow 
over their now desolate regions. The Forestry Association respectfully 
submits that such a legislative policy is the best possible disposal of such 
lands. 

PERCENTAGE OP GOVERNMENTAL OWNERSHIP. 

In Germany two-thirds of the forest area is maintained by the govern- 
ment. In Austria 13 per cent of the forest area is In the hands of the 
government. Switzerland has only 4 per cent of its forest under complete 
governmental control, but governmental control is exercised over 66 per 
cent of her forest area. Italy owns but 1,6 per cent of her forest area. 
A law was enacted in Italy in 1888 requiring reforestation of ail desert 
mountain lands. In France the government prevents the cutting of timber 
even on private lands when that cutting is detrimental to the public 
welfare. Ten per cent of the French forests are held by the government. 
Spain owns 4K per cent of her forests, but controls eighty per cent of her 
forest area. Fifteen to 20 per cent of the Scandinavian forests are owned 
by the government. Russia owns two-thirds of her forest area. England 
has just begun the work of planting trees in waste places. India's forest 
revenue amounts to several million dollars annually, but Germany leads the 
world in forest management. 

GOVERNMENTAL INCOME. 

Prussia, from her 6,000,000 acres of state forest, receives an annual net 
income of $7,000,000. Saxony, from her 4,000,000 of forest lands receives 
an annual net income of 81,125,000. Bavaria, from her 3,000,000 acres 
receives annually a net profit of S4, 500, 000. 

THE STATE'S PREROGATIVE. 

The figures prove that where forests are properly managed, profit ensues 
in due time. Why should not the state, then, rise to the emergency? It 
regulates pharmacy, dental art, telegraphy, navigation, mining and the 
like, why not assume equal responsibility over the forests, seeing their 
preservation concerns all these other interests? Every year's delay lessens 
the hold of the people upon the forests and heightens the impending peril 
to our climatic and agricultural dependencies. 



96 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

But the state, years ago, committed itself to government forestry by 
virtue of the tree bounty law under whose beneficent workings more than 
a hundred thousand prairie acres have been substantially planted with 
trees, and there is no room for turning back. Why should not the state 
hold supervisory control over the trees it has liberally, paid for? This rule 
being legitimate, why not extend it in application to our natural forests, 
more especially such as are yet owned by the state? And why not sanction, 
and cooperate with, the federal government in a like control over unentered 
lands that are more profitable for tree-raising than agriculture, and abso- 
lutely necessary to water conservation? Such control would lease the 
cutting on government land, enforce economy, exclude fires, cultivate and 
save the "fittest," making the great labor-providing enterprise pay better 
than the present method, and improve all dependent industries. 

In some parts of Europe, we are informed, where forestry is reduced to 
a profitably practical system, the government awards the proprietor of a 
forest in installments, for a series of years, to preserve it intact, he using 
some of the coppice and rotting down wood, if any, for his personal needs. 
The private forests are thus placed under governmental supervision, 
allowing no destruction of any of the valuable timber; and when said timber 
is matured, the government cuts and markets enough of it to get its pay 
back. Thus the proprietor is encouraged to plant and conserve his forest 
by getting a premium in advance, and the government subsequently makes 
itself whole, and the people have the climatic benefit of it. Some such way 
IS this seems to be our necessity. It certain'y removes the objection of 
paying out money with a money equivalent returned. 

THE RESERVE SYSTEM OUTLINED. 

As a means to a general governmental control of the available forest 
30ver of the state, a movement was put on foot to secure a forest reserve. 
Wyman Elliot thus defines the location of it: "Where is there a more 
Appropriate place for an extensive experiment of forest growing under 
government control, than in the northern part of Minnesota, and one where 
there is so great need of preserving the aipeliorating effects of climatic 
conditions?" 

Basing action on the congressional law of March 3, 1891, this movement, 
in the early part of that year, was projected by the State Forestry Asso- 
ciation to locate said forest reserve on the public lands at the head waters 
of the Mississippi, Red,lSt. Louis and St. Croix Rivers. Our legislature, 
then in session, passed a joint resolution to this effect, but limited its area 
to so small a compass as to render it abortive of the end sought. A peti- 
tion, signed by leading citizens, asking for six millions of acres for a national 
reserve, was subsequently sent, with showers of others from other states, to 
President Harrison. He proclaimed six reservations in the regions of the 
Rocky Mountains. 

INCOMPETENCY OF THE ACT. 

Unfortunately the law opened up to almost unrestricted use of all tim- 
ber lands not so reserved. While it implied an unlooked for license to 
deforest adjacent territory, it virtually denied encouragement to agricul- 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 97 

tore, railroading, mining, etc., within the reservations. Summing up these 
defects, Land Commissioner Carter recommended that -provision should 
be made for the immediate reservation of all public lands bearing forests 
or timber, except for entry and mining lands." 

Tte defects in the law and the crudeness of our original petition were 
followed by strong remonstrances against the Minnesota reserve, and it 
was left out of the list of proclamations, with several others like situated. 

NEW BASE OF OPERATIONS. 

Gaining ground by experience, the Minnesota foresters joined with those 
of other states, demanding a law which, as stated by Mr. Carter, 'shall 
make adequate provision in respect to both forest reservation and the 
cutting and removal of timber to supply the public necessities. Finding 
our lumbermen and other business citizens endorsed this suggestion of the 
land commissioner, our State Forestry Association has since issued the 
following petition, which is here again laid before the candid considera- 
tion of our people in confident trust that they will not only endorse it, but 
heartily work to secure something of the kind before the lands there are 
so placed as not to be available for a reserve. A like petition has been 
endorsed by the State Horticultural Society: 

PETITION FOR A FOREST RESERVE. 

To the President of the United States : , ^ 

The undersigned citizens of Minnesota set forth that the annua fires on 
the woodlands of the public domain have destroyed much valuable timber 
and largely injured the forest conditions necessary to economize our waters; 
Lat the staling of timber has been immense; that the methods of cutting 
have been wasteful and ruinous to timber preservation and culture. We 
therefore respectfully urge the passage of a bill which shall ask for a prac- 
tical system of forestry, managed by proper police forces to guard agains 
fires and trespass and develop forest growth. In accord therewith, we 
respectfully urge that a reserve in one body, or in separate sections, be 
ocated on the public domain at the sources of the Mississippi, Red St 
Lou s and St. Croix Rivers, or other points, carved out of non-agricultura 
lands aggregating not less than 2,000,000 acres, and so regulated as not tc 
rZtnclZntisoi bona fide settlers, nor the rights of lumbering, minin, 
andTailroading, but rather to promote those industries without detriment 
to forest preservation. 



93 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

THE FOREST RESERVATIONS BILL NOW 
BEFORE CONGRESS. 

There is now pending in congress a bill (H. R. 119) to protect forest 
reservations in the United States, but just what it provides may not be 
generally known. 

The bill was introduced September 6, 1893, by Hon. Thomas C. McRea, 
chairman of the committee on public lands in the House of Representa- 
tives. The measure is entitled, '*A Bill to Protect Public Forest Reserva- 
tions," and is divided into eight brief sections, as follows : 

" Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United 
States of America in Congress assembled, That all public lands heretofore 
set apart and reserved by the President of the United States, under the 
provisions of the act, approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety- 
one, or that may hereafter be set aside and reserved as public forest reser- 
vations, shall be, as far as practicable, controlled and administered in ac- 
cordance with the provisions of this act. 

Sec. 2. That no public forest reservation shall be established except to 
improve and protect the forest within the reservation, or for the purpose 
of securing favorable conditions of waterflow and continuous supply of 
timber for the people. 

Sec. 3. That the Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the 
protection against fire and depredations of the public forest reservations 
set aside, or that may be set aside, under the said act of March third, 
eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and he may make such rules and regu- 
lations and establish such service as will insure the objects of such reserva- 
tion, namely, to regulate their occupancy, to utilize the timber of commer- 
cial value, and to preserve the forest cover from destruction : Provided, 
that no timber of commercial value shall be sold except to the highest 
bidder on sealed proposals after due appraisement, as hereinafter provided, 
at not less than the appraised value thereof. 

Sec. 4. That before any sale of timber of commercial value on any 
forest reservation shall be made, notice thereof shall be given for at least 
thirty days in a newspaper of general circulation printed and published at 
the capital of the state or territory, and shall also be published, when 
practicable, in a newspaper printed and published in the county and coun- 
ties in which such reservation is situated, describing by numbers the tracts 
of land on which the same is situated and the location thereof, and desig- 
nating the land office of the district in which the land is situated as the 
place where such sealed proposals will be received, and stating the time 
within which such sealed proposals will be received. All such sales will be 
for cash, payable at the time of sale at the land office of the district in 
which the land is situated, and the proceeds shall be accounted for by the 
receiver of such land office in a separate account, and shall be covered 
into the treasury as a special fund to be expended in the care and man- 
agement of such reservations in such manner as Congress may provide. 



GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 99 

Sec. 5. That the Secretary of War is hereby authorized to make such 
detail of troops for the purpose of protecting said reservations as the 
Secretary of the Interior may require. 

Sec. 6. That any public lands embraced within the limits of the forest 
reserve which, after due examination, shall be found better adapted to 
agricultural than forest uses, may be restored to the public domain upon 
the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, with the approval of 
the President, after sixty days' public notice in two newspapers of general 
circulation in the state or territory where the reservation is situated. 

Sec. 7. That any timber on the public lands, not within a forest reser- 
vation, may be sold by order of the Secretary of the Interior in the same 
manner as is heretofore provided in this act: Provided, That it shall be 
first shown that such cutting will not be injurious to the public interests: 
And provided further, That no timber on the public lands shall be disposed 
of except in accordance with the provisions of this act. 

Sec. 8. That all acts and parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions 
of this act are hereby repealed. 

It might be added that Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Hoke Smith, 
approves of the bill, and Hon. W. M. Stone, Commissioner of Public 
Lands, has recommended its passage. The original bill did not contain 
all the above, but several amendments have been inserted, which make it 
satisfactory to the officials named. Let the reader apply above bill to the 
needs of Minnesota. Shall we act or shall we be supine respecting a forest 
reserve? 



FORESTAL IRRIGATION IN MINNESOTA. 

There is such a dearth of water during the dry seasons these years, and 
when our agricultural and tree crops most need it, resulting in poor 
harvests, that the matter of irrigation must be considered. Necessity 
drives us to provide some way by which the surplus water in the spring, 
usually rushing in destructive floods and reacting into severe drouths, can 
be conserved and economically distributed. The state legislature has not 
estimated geodetic surveys as of practical importance enough to have it 
done on the scale which our necessities demand. It is certain that were all 
the water falling from the clouds and gushing from the springs and running 
to waste, harbored in ample reservoirs at or near our numerous watersheds, 
and thence made to flow over our lower lands, under proper management, 
the uncertainty and cankering anxiety about our crops and trees would be 
ended, and their abundance increased almost beyond measure. Where the 
reservoirs should be established, will have to be determined by competent 
surveyors. 

EESEKVOIES IN WESTERN MINNESOTA. 

According to the annual report of Maj. W. A. Jones, of St. Paul, engineer 
in charge of the government works on the rivers of the Northwest, a great 



100 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

reservoir system on the Red and Red Lake rivers is unquestionably feasible. 
"It is well known," says the Daily Herald, of Grand Forks, N. D., "that 
the northern portion of the state of Minnesota, and especially the portion 
directly east of the Red River Valley, is composed, to a large extent, of a 
vast number of small lakes, besides Red Lake, which is of considerable 
area. These lakes comprise a number of great water basins forming the 
head waters of the Mississippi and Red Rivers. The waters east of the 
'divide' going to the Mississippi and thence to the Gulf of Mexico, while 
the waters to the west of the same 'divide' eventually find an outlet through 
the Red River to Hudson's Bay. The topography of the territory com- 
prising the head waters of the Red River is shown by the investigations of 
Major Jones to be admirably adapted to permit the formation of a large 
storage reservoir, which will not only allow the vast quantities of water 
which occasions the spring floods to be held in check, but admit of the 
same water being utilized in increasing the volume of water during the dry 
seasons. Red Lake can be utilized in the same manner as a storage 
reservoir by the construction of dams at the outlet of the lake, which will 
raise the water two feet above its normal height when needed, and also by 
means of dredging, permit the water in the lake to be lowered two feet 
when needed to keep up the volume of water in the river. Major Jones is 
confident that by the judicious arrangement of dams and the reservoir 
system proposed, not only will the inconveniences from floods and low water 
be largely done away with, but the Red River will be made navigable 
throughout the season from spring to freeze-up in the fall, and the Red 
Lake River will be made navigable the entire distance to Red Lake." 

WHERE CONSTRUCTED. 

In concluding his report. Major Jones says: 

"An increase of 1,0©0 cubic feet per second to a low water discharge of 
350 seconds would render further operations under our project for improve- 
ment unnecessary, and make an exceedingly fine line of water trans- 
portation. 

"In order to furnish this increase to the volume of discharge, the waters 
from the water-shed of Red Lake could be assembled in one reservoir, and 
those from the Otter Tail might be gathered in Lake Traverse as a 
reservoir by means of a dam at Breckenridge. This would seem to be a 
feasible and economical method of solving the question of the Red River 
of the North permanently, and hence I consider the matter worthy of the 
favorable attention of the government. In order that it may be fully 
investigated and the estimates called for submitted, a survey will be neces- 
sary, for which purpose, I estimate, the sura of S6,000 will be necessary." 

AREA OF THE NEW RESERVOIRS. 

Major Jones estimates the area of the Red Lake reservoir at 1,930 square 
miles with 9,000,000 cubic feet of water for each square mile, or 17,370,- 
000,000 cubic feet of water output in one year. The area of the Lake 
Traverse reservoir is estimated at 2,450 square miles, or 31,050,000,000 



liOVERNMENT CONTROL OF THE FORESTS. 101 

cubic feet of water. He further estimates that this would add an average 
of 2,000 cubic feet of volume to the Red River at Grand Forks in low 
water, giving a navigable draft of 5M feet below this city to the boundary 
line. 

THE WEIGHTIER QUESTION. 

The object these gentlemen have in view is the navigation of the 
waters mentioned. But a weightier question arises-whether the reservoir 
and canal system proposed can also be applied to irrigation; probably not, 
if navigation only is to be promoted, for there might not be water enough 
to go round. But the interests of agriculture, which includes forestry as 
ts prime factor, takes the precedence of navigation. Were the reservoir 
system extended as Major Jones suggests, and used mainly to head a vast 
irrigation system, under right forestation of the spring lands, it would pay 
a hundred fold more to the people than navigation at its most prosperous 
tides of commerce. There is no call for such navigation unless our crops 
warrant it. 

WHAT CAN BE DONE PRACTICALLY. 

As demonstrated in this report, without economic forest management 
economic water management is impossible. If the state would have water 
<.upply, the wild and waste territory at the sources of our great water sys- 
terns must be densely forested for a perpetual cover. Practical manage- 
ment of water implies arrangement for water drainage. Then irrigation 
becomes as beneficially applicable to well-watered as to dry and arid 
re-ions In all countries where scientific irrigation is operative, it is 
found to be far more satisfactory than irregular rainfall, even if ample, 
whose mechanical action in falling compacts the ground and impedes per- 
eolation. Not so with irrigational water; it can be applied when needed, 
on the surface in gentle fiow, or among the roots by underground piping, 
by which also provision is made for safe escape of surplus. 

Up to this date the chain of reservoirs is circumscribed to the waters of 
the Mississippi. The national government can be influenced to extend 
them to the headlands of the St. Croix and St. Louis ^r^^'';''^ '^", 
tho.e regions, drawing such waters eastward and southw^d, and extend 
them aiso so ^s te more closely interlink and economize all the lake waters 
of the park region, and, as proposed by Major Jones, to locate a great 
reservofr in Red L^ke, with which to supply the Red River Valley In- 
deed, tTe reservoir system could be practically applied and utilized over 
the southern portion of the state with equal facility^ 

Consider for a moment what can be done in perhaps the met difficult 
part of Minnesota. Suppose a suitable dam be placed at the mou h of 
Otter Tail River, as suggested by Major Jones, to supply water fpr the 
southern balance of the Red River Valley, and thence farther south 
wherever feasible; for this object another dam be placed at the head o 
Traverse Lake, another at the foot of Big Stone Lake, and so down at a 
the principal falls of the Minnesota River, and next water-wheels at all 
thlse dam' with other proper machinery, for lifting and distributing the 



102 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

water, would it not be a feasible conquest over the drouth? Such an Irri- 
gation system, so absolutely needed, is no more gigantic than what is 
already operative in the Rocky Mountain region, or anciently in the valley 
of the Euphrates. Nor would the cost be any greater. The policy should 
be to irrigate experimentally and avoid reaction. We can congratulate 
ourselves on the fact that we have innumerable spring brooks scattered 
over the state on the prairie as well as woodland, which, if utilized and 
secured in spacious basins, would afford suitable water for the bottom 
lands through which they flow. We have not yet tested our artesian sup- 
ply, as in the Dakotas, where it proves so successful, even if the water has 
to be forced up to elevated tanks. It requires but slight descent of land 
for irrigational purposes. 

AMOUNT OF WATER NEEDED. 

The amount of water required is far less than is generally supposed. The 
usual standard is a miner's inch, and one-half to three-fourths of an inch 
per acre will suffice when economically applied. The actual size of an 
irrigational ditch, carrying from fifty to one hundred inches of water, is from 
three to four feet wide and twe'lve to eighteen inches in depth, and this re- 
quires for available flow but one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch per rod. 

INCREASE OF CROPS. 

Hon. S. M, Emery, formerly of Minnesota, now director of Montana Ex- 
periment Station, Bozeman, Mont., states in his address on "Irrigation for 
Minnesota," delivered before the annual meeting of the State Horticultural 
Society, 1894, that after the ditches are once constructed the cost per acre 
for applying the water will not exceed $1 per annum, and that lands, as a 
rule, need irrigating but once, twice or thrice in a season, depending on 
soil conditions and locations; "that oacli acre upon which you can conduct 
water means four acres, as its production is increased from two to three- 
fold from irrigation; and, if this be true, the acre that by the same labor 
doubles or triples its yield, is as valuable as four times the land, consider- 
ing the material reduction in labor involved in the cultivation of four acres 
as compared to that of one." 

INITIAL STEP BY THE IRRIGATION CONGRESS. 

Here is a subjoined extract from an address to the people of the United 
States, prepared by the National Irrigation Congress at its recent session 
at Los Angeles, Cal., alike applicable to Minnesota: 

"We favor the limitation of the amount of land that may be taken up by 
settlers under systems of irrigation to forty acres, and predict that in the 
future it will be found desirable to reduce the amount still further, and we 
favor the restriction of the privilege of taking up public lands to citizens 
of the United States. This has become necessary with increase of popula- 
tion, and is also desirable as rendering more difficult the acquirement of 
lands for speculative purposes. We call attention to the growing im- 
portance of the storage problem, and demand rigid national and state 
supervision of dams and other works, in order to protect life and property. 



TREE BOUNTIES. 103 

"We especially urge the importance.of an enlightened policy for the care 
and preservation of the forests against wanton destruction by fire and 
otherwise. We indorse the policy of forest and storage reservations cover- 
ing the mountain watersheds of the West. The importance of due care 
and protection of these watersheds to maintain the perennial flow of 
springs and streams, and to prevent floods and torrents, demands the 
establishment of a wise forestry system. Pending the establishment of 
such an organization, we favor the use of detachments of the United 
States army to protect all the western mountain water sheds from injuries 
detrimental to the highest use of the valley lands." 



TREE BOUNTIES. 



The tree bounty law dates back to 1873. Since modified, it now specifies 
the number of trees required per acre, limiting the bounty to $30,000 per 
year at ^2.50 per acre. According to the records, about 74,000 acres of 
forest trees, exclusively under the operations of the law since its enact- 
ment, have been successfully raised on the prairie regions of the state. 
The aggregate for all the planting In the state during the last ten years 
tallies all of 100,000 acres. During the last forty years of tree planting in 
Minnesota, the number of trees, it is safe to say, is well nigh the billions, 
and yet the beneficent work is but begun. 

The following letter from the state auditor gives a summary ©f the work 
done during the fiscal year, ending July 31, 1894: 

St. Paul, August 16, 1894. 
Hon. J. O. Barrett, Bbown Valley, 

Dear Sir: — Replying to yours of the 16th inst., will say, that the total 
amount paid for tree planting for the year ending July 31, 1894, has been 
$16,988.24. The bounty has been paid to 2,123 different persons, and the 
area planted is 6,795 acres, each acre containing on an average 676 trees, 
which makes a total of 4,593,420 trees. 

I also enclose the financial statement of the appropriation for forestry 
association. Respectfully yours, 

A. Biermann, 
State Auditor. 

To be entitled to bounty, applicants must show that trees were originally 
planted not more than eight feet apart each way, and were kept in a thrifty, 
growing condition, and were maintained at a distance of not more than 



104 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

eight feet apart each way by replanting each year all that may have died 
during the year. Application should be make July 1 to 15 to state auditor 
for blanks. The assessor records your answers to the questions on the 
blank. In all cases two freeholders, residents of your town, must attest 
your statement, together with the assessor's acknowledgment of its valid- 
ity. It must then go to the county auditor for attestation, and when it 
reaches the state auditor, and all is right, you get yo-ur bounty. But woe 
to him who swears fraudulently. "Better for him that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." 

There is no analogy between a crop of wheat or corn and a forest grove. 
Trees are not annuals; they belong with the centuries for successive gen- 
erations. The man who raises them cannot monopolize their benefits if he 
tries. In a climatic and sanitary sense they are not his alone, though on 
his own farm. As wind-breaks they protect whole neighborhoods, impart- 
ing salubrity to all the air we breathe. They are educators of patriotic 
and aesthetic character. Along these lines of use they intrinsically are 
above all price. Surely the state can afford to improve the general pros- 
perity, healthf ulness and beauty of its vast domain. 



DISCURSIVE. 



HOW TO SAVE THE TREES. 

The indiscriminate destruction of forests is a waste of material in wood 
and water, an injury to the animals and the soil, and an insult to the 
aesthetic taste of man. It should be prevented by law and by public opin- 
ion. There are abundant reasons for practicing what Is called scientific, 
i. e., common sense forestry in the interests of the lumber trade, agricul- 
ture, the fisheries, and the preservation of water power for mills, and of 
water supply for cities. The value of the crop that can be gathered with 
little labor from a forest area on the average of a century, compares favor- 
ably with the crop that can be raised with great labor after the forest is 
cleared away and the rain is allowed to leach the soil until it becomes un- 
productive gravel. * * * The influence of the forest on the general 
welfare of the community is so decidedly beneficial that it behooves Min- 
nesota to promptly take steps to preserve the generous woodland that she 
has inherited from the past centuries. Certain areas must be permanently 
cleared for agricultural or other purposes, but all that is not thus treated 
should be kept covered with groves or forests. 



DISCURSIVE. 105 



ROTATION OF TREE CROPS. 



The principle of rotation of crops, as recognized for ordinary grains and 
roots, should be made to include the forests, and it should be a recognized 
principle that after fifty or one hundred years of agriculture there should 
come the same interval of forest culture. Every acre that is cut over 
simply for lumber or other purely forest crops, should be immediately re- 
planted to at least the same extent as that to which it has been deforested. 
State foresters should be commissioned to enforce rational laws as to 
cutting and clearing. 

COMMUNAL INTEREST. 

These restrictions on personal freedom are based on the principle that 
the whole community is interested in the preservation of its forests; they 
affect the water supply, the water power, the birds and animals, the purity 
and even the temperature of the air we breathe. A lumber state has the 
same right to protect its forest that a commercial community has to pro- 
tect its harbor and channel, or a mining community to demand the ventila- 
tion of its mines, or an agricultural community to protect its system of 
irrigation ditches and reservoirs. To cut the wrong trees, leaving half of 
them rotting on the ground; to destroy a forest without at once starting 
young trees to replace it; to leave exposed hillsides that will send destruct- 
ive floods into the valleys below; to dry up the ponds, lakes and springs, 
all this is a loss to the community and an improvident waste, as serious as 
the careless burning of the forests. The general good of the common- 
wealth demands conservative forestry, and it is the duty of the people to 
enact and support laws for such self-defense.— Pro/. Cleveland Abbe, 
Weather Bureau^ Washington^ D. C. 



SUCCESSION OF FOREST GROWTH. 

Lumbermen say: "When the pines are gone, they are gone forever." But 
what are the facts? From time immemorial such trees have grown in 
various parts of the old and new world in the same places where nature has 
been allowed to have her own way. The pines of Maine have been cut 
over and over again on the same wild grounds. The ancient oaks of Britain 
have replanted themselves times without number on the very spots where 
the Druids worshiped. The redwoods of California and elsewhere yet live 
among their giant ancestors that date back even before the beginning of 
the Christian era Despite human rapacity, the great cedars of Lebanon, 
whose sires were cut by King Solomon for his temple, have repeated them- 
selves on those shaggy heights— a few yet lingering under religious pro- 
tection. The olive trees of Palestine, and the fig trees, and the willows on 
the lower banks of the Jordan, under whose shade the nomadic Israelites 
pitched their tents, have again and again during all the centuries since, 



106 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

replanted themselves there, rebutting the lie that they do not succeed each 
other. If these instances are exceptions to the rule, they count for the rule 
when conditions warrant it. 

RETROGRESSIVE FORESTRY. 

If we rob the supports of the pines or any other class of trees, of course 
they will die out and another species of less value may take the ground and 
hold it. The reason why we observe so many tree rotations is because we 
interfere and produce the conditions that necessitate them. "When the 
pine forest is burned over," says Robert Douglas, "both trees and seeds 
have been destroyed, and as the burned trees cannot sprout from the stump 
like oaks and many other trees, the land is left in a condition for the 
germination of tree seeds, but there are no seeds to germinate. It is an 
open field for pioneers to enter, and the seeds which arrive there first have 
the right of possession." The cotton-winged seeds of the aspens and other 
poplars generally get ahead, taking root on high and dry soil, where some 
other seeds would die. The burnt land is their paradise, and their para- 
dise is the forest retrogression which our lumbering methods have paved 
the way for. 

CAUSE OF NON-SUCCESSION. 

Conifer and other seeds may sprout under their parent trees, but their 
young shoots speedily pale and die, if the shade is too dense. The same 
result occurs, though in reverse order, where the trees are all cleared off. 
If they sprout, the sun's excessive heat soon kills them. If a fire burn up 
the leaf mulch and the root network in the soil, of course the seeds are 
destroyed, and we have no succession of forest growth there, simply be- 
cause "we cannot make something out of nothing." Observing there no 
reappearance of the old species, men aver "The pines once gone are gone 
forever," and they ring the changes on this "lumber adage," to convince 
us that it is useless to try to save our pines! 

DOES NOT "RUN OUT.'-* 

Some common sense needs to be drilled into some people's understanding. 
By the decay of fallen leaves and limbs, mosses and other minor vegeta- 
tions, aided by water thus conserved, forest trees manufacture their own 
nutrition and support. Hence forest soil that is not raided by axe or fire 
does not "run out" like a farm soil planted with the same kind of seeds 
from year to year. It is plain that successive tree crops will continue to 
grow and do well on their own native heath under a practical system of 
forestry whereby the forest conditions are improved by cutting for the 
market. 



DISCURSIVE. 107 

FACTS TO CONSIDER. 

LESSONS OF WARNING. 

Less than seventy years ago, Bucharia was "one delicious garden, on every 
side, villages, rich cornfields, fruitful orchards; country houses, gardens, 
meadows interspersed by rivulets, reservoirs, canals— a lively picture of 
industry and happiness." About forty years ago, a mania of clearing the 
forests seized upon the inhabitants; they cut down the trees, and what was 
left was ravaged by fire during a civil war. Result: the waters dried up, 
the sands of the desert swept over that fair land, and next came desolation 
and solitude. 

A like fatality arising from deforestation fell upon parts of India, Turkey, 
Greece, Egypt, Italy, Spain, the once luxuriant valley of the Euphrates, 
Palestine, and so all around the world where man has presumed to unbal- 
ance the meteorological forces of nature. 

The present arid hills and worn-out fields in New England, in Pennsyl- 
vania and other Middle States, and in the sunny South, report the same sad 
story, that waste and desert follow the destruction of the forests in those 
once favored localities. 

WASTED RESOURCES. 

We have wasted and are still wasting our resources in fish and game, in 
forests and water sources, in the fertility of the soil and in other store- 
houses of the nation's natural wealth, as if responsibility to the future for 
our action as trustees of this magnificent inheritance had for us no exist- 
ence. — /. jB. Harrison. 

ERA OF HUMAN IMPROVIDENCE. 

The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and 
another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like 
duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvi- 
dence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished product- 
iveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the deprav- 
ation, barbarism, and, perhaps, even the extinction of the species. — Geo. 
P. March. 

"So profound is our ignorance and so high our presumption, that we 
marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being ; and as we do 
not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent 
laws on the duration of the forms of life." — Charles Darwin. 

APPALLING MAGNITUDE. 

The appalling magnitude of the destruction of timber in the Northwest 
will, perhaps, be made plainer to you by giving the lumber statistics of the 
cut of white pine in the Northwest for 1892, saying nothing of the enormous 
hardwood cut. The number of feet, is as follows : 



108 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

On Mississippi, above Minneapolis 109,863,378 

At Minneapolis : 488,724,624 

On main river between Minneapolis and St. Louis 931,806,305 

On St. Croix river 175,891,427 

On Black river 240,678,500 

In Chippewa valley 298,833,783 

In Duluth district 349,394,000 

St. Paul & Duluth railway 75,955,000 

Ashland district 273,229',877 

St. Paul & Omaha railway 286,311,383 

Wisconsin Central railway 301,806,875 

In Wisconsin valley 456,153,872 

Sault Ste. Marie railway 293,565,541 

In Red River valley (estimated) 100,000,000 

Taken to Canada (N. W.) 150,000,000 

Total 4,530,315,565 

CRIMINAL, IMPROVIDENCE. 

It is the timber thief, making haste to strip the public domain of what 
he can lay his hands on, lest another timber thief get ahead of him, and in 
doing this, destroying sometimes far more than he steals. It is the tour- 
ist, the hunter, the mining prospector who, lighting his camp-fire in the 
woods to boil water for his coffee, or to fry his bacon, and leaving that fire 
unextinguished when he proceeds, sets the woods in flames and delivers 
countless square miles of forest to destruction. It is all these, but it is 
something more, and, let us confess it, something worse. It is a public 
opinion looking with indifference on this wanton, barbarous, disgraceful 
vandalism. It is a spendthrift people recklessly wasting its heritage. It 
is a government careless of the future and unmindful of a pressing duty. 

No respectable university or agricultural college should be without a de- 
partment in which forestry as a science is taught; and most of us will no 
doubt see the day when the importance of that science will be recognized 
by every thinking American. Let us hope that this appreciation will come 
in time. I regret, we cannot forcibly enough impress upon the American 
people the necessity of speedy measures looking to the preservation of our 
mountain forests, which, when once destroyed, cannot be renewed. Unless 
this be done in time, our children will curse the almost criminal improvi- 
dence of their ancestors, but if it is done in time, those who are instru- 
mental in doing it will deserve and will have the blessings of future gen- 
erations. 

To bring up the public opinion of this country to the point where it will 
command such measures, a vigorous and unceasing agitation is required. 
I do not underestimate the difficulties it will have to overcome. It is the 
shortsighted greed which acts upon the rule to grab all that can be got at 
the moment, and "let the devil take the hindmost," not stopping to con- 
sider that he who does so may be among the hindmost himself, and that in 
this case his children certainly will be. It is that spirit of levity, so preva- 
lent among our people, which teaches to eat and drink and be merry to-day, 
unmindful of the reckoning that will come to-morrow. It is the cowardice 
of the small politician, who, instead of studying the best interests of the 



DISCURSIVE. 109 

people, trembles lest doing his full duty may cost him a vote, and who is 
not seldom apt to fear the resentment of the thieves more than that of 
honest men. — Carl Schurz. 

BLACKEST CRIME OF OUR HISTORY. 

The recent devastation by forest fires in Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin 
and Michigan, pathetically confirms the wisdom and broad-minded fore- 
thought of the agitators for forest preservation and restoration, "the for- 
estry cranks." It is announced that "fire bugs are responsible for the 
fires," and God is thanked for sending timely rains to extinguish a con- 
flagration that threatened appalling consequences. The announcement is 
a lie, and the thanks are sacrilegious. The state is primarily responsible 
for the fire, working through its petted and pampered favorites. An 
attempt is made to compute the loss from these fires, in money; it can not 
be done. The lumber and timber destroyed, the homes made desolate and 
the farms laid waste are but trifles in the complication, yet they are all 
that is computed. The young timber that should have been guarded and 
nursed into maturity for the use of those to come after us, and the soil 
that would have supported forests for generations of men yet remote, went 
out in the smoke and flames of those awful fires. Those who can fully 
appreciate and correctly estimate the real loss consequent upon the de- 
struction of forests, that we now encourage, are yet unborn. A proper 
administration of our forests, the enforcement of certain simple regula- 
tions, the small expense of a given supervision, the utilization of an infin- 
itesimal percentage of the profits of our forest despoilers would secure 
ample forests, and cheap and abundant timber for posterity; while under 
existing conditions treeless wastes of nude and blackened land will be the 
scroll upon which our children and our children's children will read the 
record of our indifference, selfishness and greed. Neglect of forests, of 
their preservation and restoration is one of the blackest crimes of our his- 
tory. — Farra., Stock and Home. 

DESTROYING OUR WARBLERS. 

It is remarkable that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century there 
should be such large numbers, in the most enlightened countries in 
whom the savage spirit survives. For shooting wild birds, often maiming 
and crippling them, inflicting on them the acutest torture, is no less cruel 
and brutal than cock fighting of Spain, and the bull and other animal con- 
tests of imperial Rome. In many respects it is much more cruel. Birds 
have a very highly organized nervous system and must be keenly suscept- 
ible to pain. Almost everything they do indicates this. Their quick 
movements, their marvelous aerial evolutions, their attachments, their 
maternal instincts, their evident enjoyment of the beautiful, and the won- 
derful powers of song that many possess, all attest their high physical 
organization and prove the greatness of the cruelty that would ruthlessly 
deprive them of life. The surprise is greater when we reflect that some 
men of education, and in other respects of high character, indulge in the 
so-called sport of shooting innocent birds. It may be sport, but is it not 



110 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

the sport of a barbarian and the enjoyment of a savage? No doubt future 
ages will look on the wanton killing of birds in this period with the same 
surprise and disgust that we feel on reading the stories of the animal con- 
tests in the Roman arena. — Prof. Samuel Aughey. 

TIMBER-TESTING MACHINES. 

Already we have ''testing machines" to determine the tenacity of the 
fiber and the influence of different degrees and methods of seasoning. In 
the government building of the World's Fair, I noted the effects of heavy 
blows struck at different angles on the same and other varieties of wood. 
There was demonstrated practically, what some of us at least may have 
observed, that the qualities of the soil and climatic conditions really enter, 
so to speak, into the very constituency of the wood. "We are certain lum- 
ber trees for building purposes, and particularly for cars, bridges, etc., can 
never be developed on poor or water-soaked soils. We cannot put our 
waste places to so good a use as to plant trees thereon as shelter-belts, as 
thickets to economize evaporation. So far they pay, also for fuel. But if 
we would raise trees for their mechanical utilities, we must give them rich 
and properly-drained soils. 

EOADSIDE TREES IN PRANCE. 

The planting of trees along the public roads of France is considered wor- 
thy ©f statistical mention. At present the total length of public roads in 
France is 18,750 miles, of which 7,250 are bordered with trees, while 4,500 
miles are already being planted, or will shortly be planted. On the remain- 
ing 7,000 miles the nature of the soil does not admit of plantations. The 
number of trees already planted amounts to 3,678,603, consisting prin- 
cipally of elm, poplar, acacia, plane, ash, sycamore and lime trees. 

NEBRASKA FORESTRY. 

Data, as near accurate as may be, show that the acreage in Nebraska 
since the extinguishment of the Indian title to lands, and the passage of 
the Kansas-Nebraska act, in 1854 is, in round numbers, about 2,031,543 
acres. We have planted about 6,065,689,750 trees. We reckon 3,000 trees 
to the acre, 4 feet by 4. It is safe to say that the spontaneous tree growth 
in the territory and state since fires have not been permitted to run over 
the prairies, has increased over the original timber area quite one-half as 
much as has been planted. Thus the total increased timber area or acreage 
for the forty years has been, say, 3,032,319 acres. — Ex-Oov. Furnas. 

HOW TO MIX. 

Rule 1. The main growth, i. e., the one that occupies the larger part of 
the ground, must be of a kind that improves soil conditions, namely, a 
densely foliaged, shade-enduring kind, which does not lose its shading 
capacity with age. 

Rule 2. Densely foliaged kinds may be grouped together, if the slow 
grower will endure the shade of the rapid grower, or can be protected 



DISCURSIVE. Ill 

against its supremacy by being planted in larger specimens, or in advance 
of the former, or in large numbers, or if its gradual killing out after it has 
served its function of soil cover is not objected to. 

Rule 3. Thinly foliaged kinds should never be grouped together where 
soil humidity is to be preserved, unless no leafy tree can be found to fit the 
locality. 

Rule 4. In grouping light-needing with shade-enduring kinds, the 
former must be more rapid growers or must otherwise be given an ad- 
vantage. 

Rule 5. The mixing in of the thinly foliaged trees is preferably done 
singly and not in groups, unless special soil conditions necessitate the 
latter method. 

With such rules and considerations in mind, the proper practice in 
prairie planting is indicated. — Prof. B. E. Fernow. 

FOr.EST RESERVES IX NEW SOUTH WALES. 

The total forest area of New South Wales, says the Hon. J. P. Hudson, 
superintendent of the exhibit from that country at the World's Fair, is 
estimated at about 21,000,000 acres, and 1,013 forest Reserves have been 
proclaimed, covering a total of over 5,600,000 acres, subdivided in twenty- 
five districts, each having resident foresters and traveling inspectors whose 
duty it is to safeguard these forest reserves In 1891 the forest depart- 
ment expended $119,375 upon the northern reserve for the conservation of 
red cedar, and other purposes. As in the United States, so also in New 
South Wales, Arbor Day has been appointed, on which the children of all 
the public schools plant trees. There is also a state nursery, consisting of 
over 1,200,000 trees, representing over 250 kinds of timber. 

ACREAGE RESERVED IX THE UNITED STATES. 

The forest reservations proclaimed by the President, under the Congress- 
ional act of March 1st, 1891, are divided as follows in the different states 
and territories : 

Alaska 1,851,520 New Mexico 311,040 

Arizona 355,520 Oregon 4,653,440 

California 6,238,729 Washington 967,680 

Colorado 3.101,360 Wyoming 1,239,040 

ECONOMIZING SNOW. 

"Mr. R. W. Piper, in his Trees of America, states that an unobstructed 
warm wind will dissolve the snow more than ten times as fast as when 
protected from the wind, the temperature being the same." The snow 
that falls on the open prairie has little or no continuity, the wind sweeps 
it away, leaving the ground to freeze solid and deep, and drifting it into 
the ravines and other places where it may be useless to the farm. The 
frost-crust being impermeable, and the melting rapid in the early spring,the 
water rushes away in floods. If farmers would have the benefits of the 
snow-mulch, wind-breaks should be numerous, and at different angles, so 
that the snow-flakes will eddy on their fields. The action of the snow in the 
woodsis different. There it remains generally level, pressed over the litter, 
infilled with air like so much fur, that protects against undue freezing of the 



112 



TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



ground, keeping it open for percolation when the snow melts. The forest- 
cover greatly retards the melting process, lengthening the time to filter 
down. Being a poor conductor of heat, snow melts from beneath, hence its 
upper stratum has a tendency to glide forward, in so doing, it gathers up in 
the woods the leaves and sticks, and the slushy stuff forms itself into 
little dams at the base of the trees and around the logs and stones, making 
water-pools even on the hill-sides. The water thus held back, percolates 
along the roots, saturating all the ground to complete fulness. The result 
is a subterranean water conservation by whose drainage it reappears in 
summer for vegetative growth. Strange to say, state and national legis- 
lature tolerates and encourages a business policy that pays no attention to 
this conservative arrangement of nature. 

THERMAL ALTERNATIONS. 

Like all other plants, the trees are slow but great absorbers of sun-heat from 
the air and other sources. The heat-storing process may be so intense and ex- 
tensive during the germinating and flowering season as to result at night 
in an atmospheric chill. The German forester Ney, maintains that "the 
unreasonable frosts of mid-May in Europe, are due to the amount of heat 
absorbed by plants at that season. " The alternations from cold to 
heat, and from heat to cold, are interchangeable forces by which precipi- 
tation becomes possible, and the agent which nature specially employs in 
these operations, is the forest making dew ana mist, and snow and rain. 



PLANTS OR TREES PER ACRE. 

The following table will be found very convenient, as giving the number 
of plants or trees on an acre, at various distances apart: 

6 inches apart each way 154,240 

1 foot " " " 43,560 

13^ feet " " " 19,360 

2 feet by 1 foot , . . . 21,780 

2 feet apart each way 10,890 

feet by 2 feet 7,260 

feet apart each way 4,840 

2,730 



3 
3 

4 

5 

6 

8 

10 

12 

15 

18 

20 

23 

30 



1,750 

1,200 

690 

430 

300 

200 

135 

110 

90 

50 



DISCURSIVE. 113 

Rows six feet apart, and trees one foot apart in the row, 7,315 trees per 
',re. 

Rows eight feet apart, and one foot apart in the row, 5,434 trees per 
;re. 

Rows ten feet apart, and one foot apart in the row, 4,389 trees per acre. 
One mile of wind-breaks or shelter belt requires 5,280 trees or cuttings 
for a single row, one foot apart in the row. 



acre 

R( 

acre 



MECHANISM OF A FLOWER. 

The chief parts of a flower are its stamens and pistils in its center. 
Given these sex-organs, though the petals, color and perfume be wanting, 
yet we have a true seed-bearing flower. The top of each stamen is a little 
box of pollen; the bottom of each pistil is a little box of seed germs. The 
pollen ripens slowly in the stamen case, but, becoming ripe, it must be 
released and reach the seed germ. The top of each pistil is a stigma, or 
little sticky cushion, to which the pollen dust will be likely to adhere if 
brought in contact with it. Once landed on the stigma the pollen seed 
bursts and sends a minute aliment of growth down the style of the pistil to 
the seed germs lying in the box at its base. Thus the seed germs are ferti- 
lized; they begin to grow into seeds. Unless these new seeds were con- 
stantly reproduced, the world of plants must soon end, and therewith also 
the animal world. It is the aim of the plant to assume the continuance of 
its kind by getting the pollen dust safely landed on the pistil. 

SEX-COMMERCE OF PLANTS. 

But helpfulness is needed from some quarter. The wind comes into 
play, but often fails to do the work. We must understand that stamen 
flowers and pistil flowers are not always on the same plants, nor always 
on the same tree. And we should appreciate the laws of evolution, alike ap- 
plicable to plants as to the animal kingdom, that we have the best improved 
kinds when the pollen comes to the pistil from some other flower than its 
own. As the pollen is a commodity of sex-commerce, it must be carried 
about. What agency has nature provided to meet this necessity? Why, 
the honey-seeking insects. 

INSECTS COLLECTING POLLEN. 

Most insects have a long tongue or pipe for eating or drinking. This 
pipe may shut up like a telescope or coil up like a watch spring. With 
this long tube the insect can pok^ into the slim cups, horns and folds of 
flowers of varied shapes. Who that has seen a big bee busy in a lily or 
trumpet flower, an ant come crawling from the tiny throat of a thyme 



114 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

blossom, a wasp feeding on a honeysuckle or pink, a bumble-bee feasting 
on a wild rose, until his velvet coat is covered with golden dust, can doubl 
the efficiency of the insect in collecting pollen? 

INSECT PARTNERSHIP. 

In every business all the partners must have some profit. The insect 
partner in flower-increasing has honey for his gains. As the pollen ripens 
the flower secretes a drop of honey for the insect partner. The ripe pollen 
and the ready honey are simultaneous. Just at this crisis, too, the hues of 
the flower are gayest to lure the insect eye, and the perfume is also most 
penetrating to call the attention of the winged-partner in the flower 
business. 

FRUCTIFYING THE SEED GERMS. 

Into the blossom goes the insect, and comes out dusty with pollen; its 
legs, body, wings are covered with the minute precious grains. Off then 
to another flower, and evidently as it creeps into the remote honey drops, 
It rubs against the sticky stigma of the pistil and leaves thereon the desired 
pollen to fructify the waiting seed germs. 

SAME KIND OF FLOWERS. 

But stay, the pollen of a rose will not make the seed germs of a lily 
grow; the tulip can do nothing with the pollen from a honeysuckle; the 
pollen of a buttercup can only be used by a buttercup. To do any good, 
the pollen must go from one flower of a kind to another of the same kind. 

INSECTS NOT ERRATIC. 

How can this safe conveyance be assumed by any creature so erratic as 
an insect ? But insects are not so erratic as they seem. Watch them. 
They have a singular and fixed habit in feeding. They go always from 
flowers of a kind to other flowers of the same kind. Watch a bee. It 
goes from clover to clover, not from clover to daisy. The butterfly flits 
here and there, but watch it settle. If it begins with a pink it keeps on 
with pinks. If it begins with golden rod, it keeps on with golden rod. If 
I have in my garden only one petunia, the butterfly which feeds upon that 
will fly over the fence for more petunias, and will not be beguiled on that 
round by my sweet peas. 

UNALTERABLE HABIT. 

God has fixed this unalterable habit in insects. They feed for a long 
time on the same kind of flowers, and thus convey pollen where it is needed 
and can be used. The butterfly, which serves itself with its feet for stand- 
ing, but almost never for walking, is one of the most active partners of the 
flower. Because, being almost wholly a flying insect, the butterfly is in no 
danger of wasting pollen by rubbing it off on leaves or stems, where it 
must perish. Loaded with pollen from one flower, the butterfly ' goes 
speedily to the waiting heart of another flower. Besides, it eats only 
honey and never pollen, and it spends its entire time revelling from bloom 
to bl«om, while its long tube enables it to feast upon every flower that 
grows. 



DISCURSIVE. 115 

CROSS FERTILIZATION. 

The production of seeds by the transference of pollen from the blossom 
upon which it ripens to the seed germs of some other blossom, is called 
cross-fertilization. The falling of the pollen upon the pistil of the same 
flower is called self-fertilization. The prevention of self-fertilization is 
secured by many wonderful devices, while cross-fertilization seems need- 
ful, not only for the normal development, but even to the continuance of 
the vegetable kingdom. Among other means to this preventive end is the 
curious difference In time between the ripening of the pollen-sac and of the 
seed germs upon the same flower. There is but one time in the history of 
the pollen when it can fertilize the seed, that is when the pollen is entirely 
ripe, but while its cadence has not yet begun. Also, the seed germ can 
only be fertilized when it has reached, not passed, its proper stage of 
maturity. Now, the critical moments of the due ripeners of germ and 
pollen are seldom simultaneous in the flower. The pollen-sac discharges 
its treasure to be insect-borne to some more mature blossom ; the seed 
germ delays its ripening and awaits the Danse-shower from other laggard 
bloom. — Julia McNair Wright, in Scietice News. 



LIGHT INFLUENCES. 

In the earliest stages of life the little seedlings of most trees require 
partial shade and are quite sensitive in regard to light conditions. Some 
have such a small range of light and shade endurance that, while there 
may be millions of little seedlings sprouted, they will all perish if some of 
the mother trees are not removed and more light given; and they will 
perish equally if the old growth is removed too suddenly and the delicate 
leaf structure, under the influence of direct sunlight, is made to exercise 
its functions beyond its capacity. 

STRUGGLING FOR LIGHT. 

Left to itself, as the forest grows up and as the individual trees develop, 
each trying to hold its ground and struggling for light, there is a natural 
thinning taking place, some trees lagging behind in growth and being 
shaded out, until in old age only as many trees remain as can occupy the 
ground without incommoding each other. This struggle among the in- 
dividuals goes on during their entire life. Some few shoot ahead, perhaps 
because of a stronger constitution or some favorable external cause, and 
overtower their neighbors; these, lagging behind, fall more and more 
under the shading influences of their stronger neighbors until entirely 
suppressed, when they only vegetate until they die, while the struggle 
continues among the dominant class and is never ended in a forest that is 
utilized at the proper time by man. 



116 TEEE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

BATTLING FOR MASTERY. 

The differentiation into dominant growth and laggards takes place in gen- 
eral earlier and more decidedly on strong soils, also in light-needing sooner 
than in shade-enduring species, which last keep up an even struggle much 
longer than the former, so that it is difficult to say which will finally win. 

ASSISTING NATURE, 

It is to give direction and assist in this struggle, to hasten its results, 
to obviate, if possible, useless expenditure of energy by timely interference 
that the forester steps in with the ax. For the natural thinning, as a rule, 
does not progress satisfactorily for the best quantitative and qualitative 
development, and hence it is assisted by the forester, it being well under- 
stood that there is a larger total and more valuable product to be had with 
a smaller number of individuals through better development of the latter. 

NUMERICAL SCALE. 

It is the number of trees that yield the best result, not the greatest 
number that we try to keep growing. What this best number is, depends 
naturally on the kind of tree; it changes also with age, as the trees need 
more room, and with soil and situation. In the average we would not be 
far out of the way to require per tree in the twentieth year 10 square feet, 
in the fortieth year, 40; in the sixtieth year, 100; in the eightieth year, 125; 
and in the one hundreth year, 160 square feet growing space, or 4,300, 
1,100, 435, 350, and 270 trees per acre, respectively, at the ages noted, 
would represent about the proper average condition of growth. There are 
from 50 to 75 per cent more shade-enduring trees possible on an acre than 
light-needing; more trees on poorer soils, sometimes two to four times as 
many, than on good soils, and more in the valley, sometimes double that 
of the higher elevations; so that while a pine growth of, say, 60 years may 
show 500 trees to the acre, a beech growth may contain 750 trees under the 
same conditions. — Prof. B. E. Fernow. 

EFFECTS OF LIGHT COLORS. 

Experimentation has demonstrated that plants of varied species differ 
in respect to the rays of light which they absorber reject. About twenty- 
five years ago, M. Bert reported to the French Academy of Sciences the re- 
sults of his experiments under the influence of colored lights on twenty-five 
species of growing plants, belonging to as many families, and exposed to 
the same conditions. He found 

First — That green is almost as obstructive as total darkness. 

Second— That red is very injurious, but not so much so as green, and 
that it causes plants to elongate in a singular manner. 

Third — That yellow is less injurious than the above, but more so than 
blue. 

Fourth — That any one of the colors has a bad effect on plants, and that 
their union in the proportion that forms white light is necessary to vege- 
table health. 



DISCURSIVE. 117 

REVELATIONS OF THE SPECTROSCOPE. 

It has been discovered by the spectroscope, that light, when traversing a 
leaf, shows an abundance of green and red rays, which are not utilized by 
the plant. This, doubtless, accounts for the fact that some young trees 
will not live in the dense shade of the parent tree. Trees differ, too, in 
the quality of the light that is absorbed and transmitted. Doubtless the 
mosses and liverworts enjoy the red rays, for they will thrive luxuriantly 
under the densest forest shade. Some of our forest trees, the ash for 
instance, will live under the shade of other trees, where a different species 
will die. Some of the rays transmitted, for instance, by the box elder, 
whose shade predominates, may be absorbed by the ash. A beech will 
grow under the shade of an oak better than the young oak itself. In such 
cases different species of trees mutually support each other. It has been 
observed that the box elder does less injury to grass and grain under its 
shade than some other species. The elder seems to favor the growth of 
grass, while the broad-spreading butternut excels most trees as a monopo- 
list — it injures both grain and grass. 

EFFECT OF TREE-SHADOWS. 

The effect of the shadows of different species of trees elongated, for 
instance, in the morning sun, is very marked. Though the shadows may 
be equally dense, the injury on cultivated plants is very unlike. Whether 
there is any peculiar chemical action, imparted by the tree, cast forward 
into and with the shadow, we know not; the more plausible inference is 
on the data here given, that certain rays are absorbed more by the leaves 
of one tree than another. These experimentations corroborate our obser- 
vations, demonstrating that trees do better where a variety of species are 
growing side by side, than they do under our set method of having only 
one species or variety on the lot. 



WORK OF THE TREES. 

"The tree of the field is man's life," said the inspired law-giver of the 
Hebrews. In this short sentence, written over three thousand years a^-o 
is condensed all that trees do for us. They give us life. Without them 
we could not live. In destroying them we destroy our means of existence. 
To the outward eye a tree is a very plain, simple thing, with its root, 
stem and branch, wood, bark and leaf, given to us to provide shade and 
fruit, and to gratify our sense for the beautiful with its form and color. 
But much more than this is there. There are invisible powers working 
ceaselessly within and around it, which control and direct the machinery 
of the world. As we study the origin and life of a tree, we learn with 
wonder the mighty preparation made for its coming on earth, and the 



118 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

abundant provision for its continuance. We see, as Maurice de Guerin 
wrote, "Nature all absorbed in the mystery of her maternities," and real- 
ize that the gigantic forces of the world which, for ages of aeons, were busy 
upon the earth, have been preparing it for the growth of trees. The forest 
was the finishing touch put to the earth, and with it the dwelling-place, 
prepared by God for man, was declared complete. 

EVOLUTIONAL GROWTH. 

The provision in nature for the renewal and continuance of the tree 
growth is very remarkable. When certain requisite conditions of climate 
are present, the hardest rock is as certain to be overgrown with wood as 
the most fertile plain. Lichens and mosses first prepare the way by re- 
taining the moisture of rains and dews and bringing it to act with the 
gases evolved from their own organic processes in decomposing the surface 
of the rocks they cover; they arrest and confine the dust which the wind 
scatters over them, and their final decay adds new material to the soil 
already half formed beneath and upon them. A very thin stratum of 
earth is sufficient for the germination of seeds of the hardier trees, whose 
roots are often found in direct contact with the rock, and which seem to 
want but little more from the earth than the mechanical conditions favor- 
able to the penetration of their roots and the support of their trunks in an 
upright position, the whole of their substance being derived directly or 
indirectly from the atmosphere. These prepare the way for other trees 
and plants by deepening and enriching the soil through the decomposition 
of their own foliage. This elaborate and careful provision of nature to 
insure the permanency of trees indicates that they must have a work to 
perform which has its effect upon all the conditions of the earth. — Prof. 
N. H. Eggleston, 

MOISTURE PRODUCTS. 

It is stated by reliable authorities who have visited Russia, that its top- 
ographical and climatic conditions in general are very much like our North- 
western prairies, and the flora of both countries largely corresponding. 
Possibly, it may be found that their meteoric phenomena, local influences 
allowed, are counterparts of each other. 

In his World's Fair report of Russian "Agriculture and Forestry," John 
Martin Crawford, United States Consul General to Russia, informs us 
that "the black-earth governments of Russia (a central southerly region 
near, or comprising Moscow) suffer more frequently from drouths than the 
northern governments, although in the former, the precipitation of moist- 
ure is much more copious." In the northern region referred to, where the 
precipitation is considerably less, "drouths are rare, and the harvests often 
suffer from an overabundance of moisture." This seems to be a meteoric 
paradox. But Mr. Crawford lucidly explains it all by stating, that at the 
low temperature in the governments of northern Russia, " a much smaller 
quantity of moisture is sufficient for the slower evaporation. Besides this, 
the long winters, and the presence of large lakes, swamps and forests, 
favor the existence of a greater quantity of moisture." 



DISCURSIVE. 119 

Here is demonstrated the fact, that the dependencies of plants are not so 
much upon precipitation perse as upon the convective humidity of the atmos- 
phere. The wild and improperly cultivated soil of our prairies is usually 
compacted by excessive heat and heavy rains, when they do fall; hence the 
precipitation is soon lost by "running away." As before shown, surface 
stirring of the soil fits it for moisture absorption and capillary action. But 
this will not save us from drouths and crop failures, unless there is enough 
moisture to supply the needs of our plants, either by root or leaf imbibation, 
or, better, by both. 

Meteorologically speaking, northern Russia does doubtless have an ad- 
vantage over us of the Northwest. Her forests there are vaster than ours. 
Aside from great interior lakes and undrained swamps, she has the humid 
influences of the Baltic and White Seas, and the cooling winds of the Arctic 
Ocean, converting the vapors into mists and dews. 

But it is possible in human enterprise to make our Northwest equal to, 
"if not surpass northern Russia in water facilities. Lake Superior is our 
Baltic Sea. Our chain of great lakes in northern Minnesota, and our 
swamp lands, are, with economic appliances, ample for all our needs. The 
salutary influences of the Arctic Ocean are equally ours to command. We 
still have the remnant of a forest. If our Minnesota would "rise and 
shine," the raided forest must be repaired. This done — and done imme- 
diately, or lose forever the successful point — and next the canalization of 
the state, bringing a goodly portion of Lake Superior "this way" for irri- 
gational and navigational purposes, and the canalization of the great 
plains from the Missouri to the Mississippi, aiding their forestation; when 
this is done, as our very necessity, we shall have evolved moisture ample 
for the needs of our agriculture and fruit raising, not then surpassed by 
Russia or any part of the globe in the north temperate zone. 

WOOD CONSUMPTION FOR MINING. 

"It is safe to say that the estimate of a total annual consumption for 
mining purposes in the United States Is 150,000,000 cubic feet of wood. In 
comparison with the general consumption of wood in the United States, 
which must amount annually to over 20,000,000,000 cubic feet, these 
figures do not allow us to point out the mining industry as a leading 
factor of the exhaustion of our timber supplies. Yet in some regions the 
question of the supply of mining timber has already attained sufficient 
Importance to call for its consideration. In the Pennsylvania coal region 
the near-by supply is rapidly diminishing, making longer haulage neces- 
sary. In fact, the companies and operators reporting to the Forestry 
Division draw their supplies mostly thirty to forty miles, and some of them 
eighty miles, to their fields of operation. Even from the famous timber 
region of northern Michigan, this state of affairs is reported. In Utah, the 
scanty home supply would have been used up long ago but for some im- 
portation of California timber, upon which also tiie Nevada mines now 
rely almost entirely. The Montana mines are using enormous quantities, 
much more than can be furnished for any length of time by the limited 



120 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

home supplies. In Butte City, the great Anaconda mine alone consumed 
last year over 1,000,000 cubic feet of mining; and building timber; and the 
consumption of firewood for smelting, etc., in this one camp, was estimated 
at a round 300,000 cords per annum. W);iile to the mine superintendent 
other questions of management may seem more Important at present, the 
question of timbering with regard to economy in the use of the material 
may soon become momentous, as the general lumber market is bound to 
advance in price with increased demand and decreased supply, for the 
reproduction of which nothing but nature's slow processes are relied 
upon." 

PLEASURE GROUNDS. 

It is easily within the memory of those- living that pleasure grounds were 
provided by the large cities of the world for the recreation of the people. 
Until recent times the common people were looked upon as of too little 
importance, or as having too little respite from their daily toil, for any 
public provision to be made for their healthful recreation and pleasure. 
The large tracts of forests and parks in Europe, whether owned by the 
state or by private citizens, were kept for pleasure and hunting grounds 
for use only of the nobility and gent^-y — the privileged few. Within recent 
times many of these crown lands have been utilized as parks for the people, 
whose growing importance and needs command respect and consideration, 
even under monarchial government. The recent European parks were, as 
a rule, old private parks, or crown lands, now made free and adapted to 
public use. And for this purpose they have been improved and so treated 
as to bring out all the possibilities of landscape beauty. — Warren Higley. 

TURTLE MOUNTAIN RESERVE. 

Under the leadership of Hon. W. W. Barrett, superintendent of irrigation 
and forestry, North Dakota, a forestry reserve will eventually be located 
at Turtle Mountain, the watershed heights of the far north. Nothing is 
more essential for the interests of agriculture in all that region so famous 
for its wheat production. We must have this important link put into the 
great chain of reserves ere long to be stretched from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. 



EDUCATIVE. 



FOREST ORGANIZATIONS. 

Forestry is now recognized by the general government as well as by the 
governments of a number of states. With active forestry associations in 
Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Minnesota, Kentucky and Colorado, and 
organizations closely allied in interest In other states; with the forestry 
division of the Department of Agriculture at Washington, seeking to dis- 
seminate knowledge as to arboriculture and the utilization of various 
woods; with special commissions studying the forest problems of Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and Michigan, added 
to a widespread influence resulting from the excellent exhibition of forest 
products and forest development in connection with the World's Columbian 
Exposition at Chicago, we see much of encouragement. To these may be 
added the public meetings of the American Forestry Association, the Penn- 
sylvania Forestry Association, and the other kindred societies, the Forestry 
Congress held in Chicago in October, the growing observance of Arbor 
Day in various states, and the interest exhibited by those who are educat- 
ing the youth of to-day, making a resume which marks real progress. — 
Forest Leaves. 

By the educational instrumentality of the American Forestry Associa- 
tion, not only has a rational forest policy been formulated, but a congres- 
sional enactment secured, March 1, 1891, whereby the President has pro- 
claimed a series of forest reservations, located in the Rocky Mountain and 
Pacific regions, aggregating over 17,000,000 acres. Within a decade scien- 
tific forestry has gained such an impetus, the United States civil engineers 
and the officials of the Weather Bureau are experimenting to know what 
part the forests perform in precipitation and water distribution. The 
American Association for the Advancement of Science is actively cooperat- 
ing, and so the horticultural societies of different states. Many influen- 
tial monthlies, weeklies and dailies are heartily engaged in the good work. 
Public sentiment is pressing Congress to do something more definite and 
positive to control the forest cover of the United States. 

ARBOR DAY. 

Arbor Day was originated by Hon. J. Sterling Morton, secretary of the 
United States Department of Agriculture, who, in 1872, then governor of 
Nebraska, introduced a resolution at a meeting of the State Board of Agri- 
culture,' which was unanimously adopted, setting apart the 10th day of 



122 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

April as a day consecrated to tree planting^ and offerings special premium 
for the proper planting of the largest number of trees. It is stated that 
on that day over a million trees were planted in Nebraska. In 1874 his 
successor, Gov. Robert W. Furnas, issued the first Arbor Day proclamation 
which was generally observed, and the next year the legislature of that 
state made it a legal holiday in Nebraska. 

Minnesota followed the example. Under the leadership of Leonard B. 
Hodges, then secretary, the State Forestry Association offered premiums 
for tree planting on our first Arbor Day, May 1, 1876. The responses of 
the people were wonderful indeed. Over a million trees were planted for 
prizes alone. 

The application of the grand work to the schools was first named and 
projected in Minnesota. In August, 1882, the American Forestry Associa- 
tion (international) held its annual meeting in St. Paul, when Prof. B. G. 
Northrop, of Connecticut, originator of "Village Improvement Societies" 
(by tree culture), successfully introduced a resolution favoring the observ- 
ance of Arbor Day in all the schools of the states and Canada. Minnesota 
again at the front, Hon. L. Hubbard, in 1885, was the first governor of our 
state who proclaimed Arbor Day under the school regime, followed in the 
succeeding administrations by Governors McGill, Merriam and Nelson, 
cooperated with by Prof. D. L. Keihle, superintendent of public instruc- 
tion, and equally earnest by his successor. Prof. W. W. Pendergast, and 
county superintendents and principals of schools generally throughout the 
state. Since these initial steps Arbor Day is annually observed in nearly 
all the states and territories, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, 
South Africa, and will soon be world-wide. 

The sylvan anniversary means more than mere sentiment, or even an 
understanding of the benefits derived from tree planting. It involves the 
discipline of foresight. Tree culture and waiting for growth extending 
through a life-time and thence to other generations till it becomes a factor 
of patriotic history, gravitates the mind and heart to stability of purpose 
and establishes character-building on enduring principles. 

EXTENSION OF THE WORK. 

Heretofore the observance of the day has been the planting of trees on 
the farms and along the streets and highways and streams, and in the cem- 
eteries and parks and lawns of the homes and schools and churches. All 
this is most praiseworthy; but why not extend its usefulness in saving 
young, native trees? The duty in hand is to eradicate the inherited habit 
of tree destruction without respect to utility. It is no uncommon practice 
for boys, and men, too, t© cwt down fine cherries, butternuts and other trees 
just for the fruit, thoughtless as to future supplies. If anything will tend 
to eradicate the vandal instinct, it is Arbor Day observed by the woodland 
schools. Where the native woods have been cleared for towns and farms is 
room enough for replanting the valuable species, such as the oaks, pines, 
spruces and maples, about as extensively as on the prairies that are mostly 
monopolized for cereal crops. Make the saving of trees inseparable from 
planting trees, and Arbor Day becomes a permanent success constantly 
growing in public interest. 



EDUCATIVE. , 123 

THE AFTER CARE. 

Where the work is not properly systematized under some official head, 
sheer neglect is apt to follow the planting. Better plant even but one tree 
and make it live than plant a hundred to die before the year has expired. 
There should be judicious supervision over the trees during the entire 
season. 

REGISTRY OF THE TREES. 

An excellent plan is to have a registry of the trees kept in the school 
archives, and the next year have a report sent to the state auditor, giving 
the species and number of trees then living, to be entered in an Arbor Day 
register for future reference. It is to be hoped that our next legislature 
will systematize some such plan by legalizing Arbor Day, as in some other 
states, thus making it more efficient in its observance, and furnishing for- 
estry statistics for the state. 

DRAFT OF THE PLANTED TREES. 

Where the locality warrants, the trees being in groups or rows, as in a 
school yard, it is well to have a draft or map of the spot, representing all 
the trees and flowering shrubs with the names attached, each pupil own- 
ing a tree. The draft should then be framed and hung up in the library 
room. 

PRELIMINARY EXERCISES. 

Prof. N. H. Eggleston, of the Forestry Division of Agriculture, at Wash- 
ington, D. C, suggests for outdoor ceremony prior to planting, that the 
children "march along the streets to the music of their own familiar songs, 
wearing such scarfs and badges as they choose to decorate themselves with, 
and carrying aloft their banners with the pride of young patriots and 
scholars." And for indoors a programme like this: 

The reading of the laws of the state relating to Arbor Day; reading of 
letters from forestry friends living abroad; brief addresses and essays on the 
subject of forestry; voting for the tree or flower that shall be the emblem 
of the school for the year; "to facilitate the voting, a blackboard facing 
the pupils during the exercises with a few drawings of trees and flowers, 
each with a characteristic attribute printed beneath it. The voting may 
be expeditiously performed by pointing to the drawings." 

FORESTRY IN OUR SCHOOLS. 

While every leading nation in Europe has its school or schools of forestry, 
there is not one such, strictly speaking, in the United States. There is a 
growing demand for such institutions. To pave the way, American for- 
esters in the states and Canada urge the establishment of a rudimental 
system of forestry in the higher grades of all our public schools. The 
times are ripe for it. Already a large number of our teachers are interesting 
their pupils on this line of education, and it is having a most salutary 
effect. If our legislature would put rudimental forestry in our educational 
curriculum, it would unquestionably meet a great and growing demand and 
evoke a hearty cooperation over the entire state. Minnesota leading, other 



124 TREl^ PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

states would soon follow. N. F. Brand, a graduate of the School of Agri- 
culture, is sanguine that the instruction there imparted tends to inspire 
"aspirations for a fuller forestry education and a better administration of 
our forests." Rethinks that the work of St. Anthony "may be the seed from 
which a good school of forestry may some time spring up in Minnesota." 



ORQANIZINQ THE SCHOOLS. 

In 1893, Hon. W. W. Barrett, superintendent of irrigation and forestry, 
North Dakota, temporarily enlisted the school children of that state in 
collecting tree seeds for the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, 111. The 
responses were so efiQcient it is now proposed to institute a permanent or- 
ganization, entitled 

THE STATE SOCIETY OF SYLVITONS. 
ARTICLE I. 

Section 1. The officers of the State Society of Sj^lvitons shall consist of 
a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and executive committee, 
to audit accounts and perform other duties for said society, and a vice- 
president in each county. Said officers shall be elected by the majority 
ballots of delegates at each annual convention, each local society being 
entitled to one delegate. The executive committee appointed by a prelim- 
inary meeting shall select said officers pro fern, holding their office until 
their successors are elected at the first regular convention, when by a two- 
thirds vote this constitution may be altered or amended. 

OBJECT OP THE STATE ORGANIZATION. 

Sec. 2. The object of the State Society of Sylvitons shall be to unite the 
educational forces of the state by means of like local societies, represented 
in this body, for forestry work and its practical application to the better- 
ment of climatic, meteorological, agricultural and horticultural conditions, 
wherein are involved the best interests of the community. 

AWARDS OF MERIT. 

Sec. 3. This society may grant awards of merit or diplomas, to any 
Sylviton, or Society of Sylvitons in the state, or elsewhere, that practically 
demonstrates superior proficiency in tree or forest culture, or in best col- 
lection of forest products, or best original essay on forestry, botany, irriga- 
tion, meteorology, or other correlative subject; and such awards shail be 
signed under seal by the president and secretary. 

local SOCIETIES. 
ART. II. 

Section 1. There may be a Society of Sylvitons In every school district 
er school of any kind within the s^ate, and it shall have the right to regulale 
its own ajffairs in harmony with the constitution and scope of the state 
society, in this form: 



EDUCATIVE. 125 
The undersigned, members of School District No. , town 



county of , state of , hereby organize ourselves into a body 

corporate, to be known as the Society of Sylvitons. 

OBJECTS DEFINED. 

Sec. 2. The objects of this society shall be: (1) to make forestry a life 
study in practical application; (2) to arrange for and properly observe 
Arbor Day; (3) to collect and neatly label specimens of woods, barks, 
leaves, twigs or branches, roots, flowers, seeds and fruits of our indigenous 
flora, together with geological and archasological specimens, for a school 
cabinet or museum of the same, and to procure exchanges with other 
societies and individuals wherever feasible; (4) to cooperate with the state 
movement for tree culture in a general way, and especially in applying 
such culture to our own environments; (5) to procure legislative enact- 
ments for the better protection of our native forests and domestic trees; 
(6) to encourage the establishment of parks, state and national forest reser- 
vations and irrigation systems; (7) to acquaint ourselves with the science 
of botany for practical uses, and to enlist the cooperation of the press, 
churches and other institutions in whatever is favorable to these objects; (8) 
to acquaint ourselves with a knowledge of our birds and their habits 
and usefulness, with a view to defend them against all robbery of their 
nests and all unkind treatment, so that they will delight to stay with 
us and bless us with their melodies and their destruction of injurious 
insects; also to procure enactments by our legislature better protecting our 
birds. 

officers and their duties. 

ART. III. 

Section 1. The oflBcers of this society shall consist of a president, vice- 
president, treasurer, secretary, and an executive committee having duties 
as aforesaid, and shall be elected annually by ballot. 

Sec. 2. The duties of the president or vice-president shall be the same 
as those of any other ethical society, and said officers shall preside 
strictly according to parliamentary rules. 

Sec. 3. The duties of the treasurer shall be to collect and hold in trust 
all funds of the society, subject to its order, vouched for by the president 
and secretary, and approved by the executive committee. 

Sec. 4. The secretary of this society shall keep a faithful record 
of its doings, and roport the same at the next meeting, and shall neatly 
file in a separate book all essays and other valuable papers belonging 
to the s®ciety, and shall attend to all necessary correspondence with other 
like societies, and shall register the species and number of trees planted on. 
Arbor Day under the management of this society, meHtioning their 
localities, and shall report the same and the name of the person to whose 
care the plants are entrusted, and the number and species of trees acid 
shrubs living at least one monthbefore the next observance of Arbor Day, 
to the president of the State Society of Sylvitons, and for North Dakota to 
the superintendent of irrigation and forestry, and for Minnesota to the 
secretary of the State Forestry Association, and for any other state to 
like authorities, where the Sylviton system may be establish d. 



126 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 

Sec. 5. The several school or district societies of Sylvitons may an- 
nually hold delegate conventions in their special towns and counties, offi- 
cered as herein designated for the furtherance of these objects. 

NO SALARIES. 
ART. IV. 

Section 1. No officer of state or local society shall receive pay for services, 
except bare cost for duties performed, and then only when approved by the 
executive board. 

Sec. 3. All moneys of this society shall be expended as voted for at any 
regular meeting, but in every instance for the sole benefit of this society. 

REGULAR MEETINGS. 
ART. V. 

Section 1. The meetings of this society shall be held at such times and in 
such places as may be voted for, and their exercises shall consist of verbal 
or written reports of personal observations and experimentations along the 
lines herein mentioned; also appropriate lectures, essays, discussions, music 
and songs. 

membership. 

ART. VI. 

Section 1. Any person under twenty-one years of age may become a mem- 
ber of this society by signing this constitution and paying the required 
fee; other persons over twenty-one may become honorary members by a 
majority vote of the society. 

amendments and by-laws. 

ART. VII. 

Section 1. This constitution may be amended at any regular meeting, 
after one month's previous notice, by a two-thirds vote of the members, 
and by-laws instituted as mUy be deemed essential to order and success. 



CHRISTMAS TREES. 

There is something peculiarly captivating in using evergreen trees, on 
which to hang our Christmas presents. It seems almost sacrilegious to 
interfere with the custom. But practical economy must take the precedence 
of mere emblems, however beautiful they may be. 

The fact of the matter is this, that millions of the most promising spruces 
and balsams, growing in our northern woods, are annually cut and shipped 
by car loads to the cities and villages of the state and those of the Dakotas. 
The hurt done to our native conifers is almost equal that of a sweeping 
forest fire. There is no religion in thus robbing our already riddled wood- 
lands of our very best young evergreens so much needed for the future. It 
is a kind of a "sacred vandalism" that should be abrogated. The preserva- 
tion of these trees for water conservation, climatic healthfulness and timber 
use in the years to come, is our first religious duty. Let us substitute 
something for the trees that will serve our purpose equally as well. 



I N D EX 



Paqb 

Act to Protect Forestry from Fires 59 

Ash Family, White, Red, Black, Blue, Green .*.*.'.*.'.*.'.*.*.'.' .12-13 

Balsam Fir 26 

Beech .'.'..................,....,. 9 

Biltmore Forest !!...!!!!....!!!.!! 91 

Birch Family, Black, Yellow, Red, Canoe .' .* . .' * .' .' .* ." ." .' .' .' * * ." .* .' ." .* .' .' .' .' .' * 14-16 

Birds, Insectivorous, Planting Forests 51-53 

Cedar, White or Arbor Vitas, Red 27 

Cherry, Wild Black .'*.'*.".'.''.".'.'.**.'.".'*.'.".'.".'.' 28 

Christmas Trees 126 

Climatic, Cosmic and Local ..*....**.*,. 74 

Copying Nature's Method of Forestation ..../........,/.... 45 

Cranberry Agriculture. 55 

Cultivation of Trees ..........!....'....! 41 

Deforestation and Cyclones, Hailstorms, Neutralizer ef '. . 83 

Discursive 104 

Do Forests Promote Rainfall? . 77 

Economic, Wild Conditions, Etc 54 

Educative 121 

Elm Family, White, Red, Rock or Cork • . . . '. '. '. . . . . '. 9-10 

Entomologic, Bark Insects. Prof. Lugger 47 

Evaporation 79-81 

Evergreens, How to Treat Plants and Seeds 42-43 

Evolution of Moisture 73 

Expense Account 4 

Facts to Consider 107-112 

Forest Chemistry, Basic Elements, Etc 69 

Forest Fires 57 

Forest Isotherm 83 

Forest Organizations. 121-124 

Government Control of Forests, Testimonial, Etc 89 

Governmental Income of Forests 95 

Grafting 46 

Great Plains, Foresting 85 

Hardy Shrubs, Hazel, High Bush Cranberry, Buffalo Berry, Etc 29-30 

Hedges, From Seeds. Prof. Pendergast 39 

Hedge Plants, Buckthorn, Prickly Ash, Jersey Tea, Etc 30-31 

Hickory, Shell-bark, Pig-nut, Bitter-nut 20-21 

Hornbeam or Ironwood, Hop, Water Beech 8-9 

How to Manage Seeds, Seedlings and Cuttings 33 

How to Save the Trees 104-105 

Indigenous Trees and Shrubs 55 

Insect Depredation 40 

Insects, Injurious and Friendly 51 

Irrigation, Water Needed, Crops by. Initial Step 99-102 

Judas Tree 28 



INDEX. 

Kentucky Coffee Tree 28 

Larch, American, European 26 

Letter to the Governor S 

Light Influences 115-117 

Linden Family, Basswood, Lime, Whitewood 11 

Locust Trees, Species, Uses of 28 

Maple Family, Striped, Mountain, Sugar, Ash-leaved, White, Red . .16-19 

Mechanism of a Flower 113-115 

Mesabi Range, Climatic Effects of 76 

New Forest Methods, Profits of 90 

Northern Forests, Effects on Vegetation 81 

Oak Family, White, Scarlet, Post, Yellow, Chestnut, Burr, Jack, Gray, 

Red, Etc 5-8 

Organizing the Schools 124-127 

Parks for all the People 56 

Percentage of Government Forest Ownership 95 

Pine Family, Jack, Norway, White, Spruces, Etc 24-27 

Planting Trees, General Directions for. ... 36-38 

Plants or Trees per Acre 112-113 

Poplars, Aspens, Tacamahac, Balmof Gilead, White, Cottonwood, Etc. 22-24 

Prairie and Forestal Breezes 76 

Precipitation, Fortuitous, Laws of 75-78 

Reserve System, New Base, Petition for 96-97 

Reservations Bill before Congress 98 

Reservoirs, Where Constructed, Area, Etc 99-100 

Sahara of Minnesota 82 

Sanitary, Water Contamination, Etc 86 

Season for Cutting Wood 39 

Seeds, Selection, Preservation, Covering of. Etc 33-36 

Soil, How to Manage 39-42 

Snowdrifts, Windrows, Mantle of 33-36 

Spruces, Black, White, Hemlock, Etc 25-26 

Spruce Wood, Demand for 66 

Succession of Forest Growth 105-106 

Supply and Demand 65 

Tax Titles on Wood Lands 95 

Taxing Timber Lands 90 

Temperature, Forest 79 

Thinning and Pruning 44-45 

Transpiration 81 

Tree Bounties 103 

Tree Planting in Red River Valley 67 

Underbrush for Forests 31 

Utilizing Our Surplus Woods 63-64 

Vines and Climbing Shrubs 32 

Walnut Family, Black, Butternut, Hickories 19-21 

Water Areas, Climatic Effects of 76 

Wastes, Reckless, Floods and Fires 57 

Willows, Black, Almond-leaved, White, Russian, Etc 21-22 

Winds, Force of, Trend of 80-85 

Wind-break, Great Forest 83' 

Woodman, Spare that Tree 63 

Wounds on Trees, Healing Methods 45 

Work of the Trees 117-120 

Zoology, Forests, Hawk, Owl, Game Animals and Birds 52-53 



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